


Stranger

by rufeepeach



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-11-25 21:32:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle remembers everything about their old life, and finally gains freedom from her asylum prison. But Rumpelstiltskin is nowhere to be found: in his place is an oblivious pawnbroker who is as cursed as everyone else in Storybrooke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There is a woman on Cameron Gold’s doorstep.  
  
He finds her at ten in the morning, although he has no idea how long she might have been waiting for him to do so. She is curled around herself, her arms clasped about her knees, shivering and staring at the street. Her long dark hair is matted, tangled and shaggy around her face, her hospital scrubs more than a little worse for wear.  
  
“Are you lost, dear?” he asks, after a moment, and she turns to look at him, a little crease between her eyebrows. As if she didn’t expect those to be his first words; as if trying to figure out how to proceed.  
  
“No…” she shakes her head, “I promised I would come back, I’m just sorry it took so long. Your Saviour took her time, didn’t she? And even then, busting out took forever.”  
  
Her voice is a little scratchy, dry-throated and underused, but clear and steady. “I’m… I’m sorry?” He shakes his head, unsure of what in God’s name is happening here.  
  
She just sighs, “Yes, I know. Me too. But here we are.”  
  
“Have we met?” He feels the absurd urge to prod her with his cane: she sits so still on his porch that she might be cast in stone. There is something a very little bit familiar about her, as if he might have seen her in the street once or twice, sat one table over in Granny’s on a rainy day or spied her passing his shop as he stared out of the window.  
  
She stands, dusts herself down, and stares up at him, “Yes…” she frowns, and then smiles, bemusedly, “You don’t remember?”  
  
He shrugs, “I’m sure I would remember if I’d met you, dear. The scrubs make you rather unforgettable.”  
  
She laughs a little, bitterly, and looks down at her clothing, “I wasn’t wearing this when we met. I distinctly remember a long dress made of golden silk, my fiancé’s stupid idea, and you wore significantly more leather.” She glances up and down, and he has the distinct sensation that she is undressing him with her eyes. Which would be entirely fine - she is a rather astonishingly pretty girl, behind the tangled hair and the scrubs - except he rather feels he comes up short.  
  
“I’m afraid I’m not exactly the biker type, dear,” he smiles because she is clearly utterly insane, “You have me confused with someone else. August Booth, perhaps: he owns a rather shiny motorcycle.”  
  
Or, at least, he had until it had met with Gold’s car key. The bastard had broken a window in his shop, tried to steal something rather valuable, and while Gold still had no notion of what the boy had been playing at, revenge had been rather unexpectedly swift and sweet.  
  
“No,” she dismisses that entirely, a line appearing between her eyebrows as she thinks hard, “The Curse disagrees: it doesn’t fit the leathers you wore. I believe… rock star is closer, although still not quite right.”  
  
And there Gold has to laugh, because no one - not even in his youth - would ever have referred to him as a rock star. “Do you need help getting back to the hospital?”  
  
She shakes her head, “I made a promise to go with you forever. And no matter how innocent you act now, Rumpelstiltskin, I don’t break deals any more often than you do.”  
  
And with that, she pushes him aside and strides inside as if she belongs, as if she owns the place and he is the stranger, although she looks about with no small amount of curiosity. He just stares after her, dumbfounded, for a long moment before following her: perhaps he can distract her and call the hospital when she’s not around, have the Mayor sort this out. He has no love at all for Regina Mills, but she does at least get things done.  
  
“Why the stained glass?” she asks, head cocked to one side.  
  
“It ah—“ he scrambles for an answer: he never really thought about it before, “Was there when I moved in. It’s pretty enough to look at, no more of a hassle to clean.”  
  
“Ah.” She nods, and then, unexpectedly, jumps up and throws her arms around him. He stumbles, having to use his cane to balance him as his knee almost gives out, but he steadies himself at last.  
  
She buries her face in the meeting between his shoulder and his neck, her arms around his shoulders, and he is entirely surprised to feel his own arms coming around to clasp around her torso, holding her against him tentatively as she clings to him. “I’m just…” She sniffled against his shoulder, as if - heaven forbid - she were about to start to cry, “I’m so glad you’re alive!”  
  
“Yes,” he murmurs, the awkwardness slipping in as the reality of the situation overrides his utter shock and confusion, “Um… me too?”  
  
She pulls back, wipes at her eyes, and he is horrified to see that she has started to cry, “You… you really don’t remember anything.” She half-sobs, “Nothing at all.”  
  
“I’m sorry.” He fidgets his hands at his sides, awkward and unknowing of how to proceed, “Are you sure…”  
  
“Yes!” she snaps, and steps back in alarm: what if she’s dangerous? Violent? What if she’s escaped from the psychiatric ward and has a knife stashed on her person, and is ready to murder anyone who tries to reason with her? His hands grip his cane: he doesn’t want to be stabbed by an escaped psychotic, but neither he doesn’t wish to harm this woman.  
  
Never hurt, never harm, they will all live, you have my word.  
  
But she just lets out a deep breath, heavy and harsh, and puts her hands over her face; he sees her shoulders shake, “I’m sorry, but yes, I’m sure. It’s you, the way you were for a moment, when I—“ she shakes her head, smiles and laughs around her freely-flowing tears, and he feels so utterly useless and unworthy of this woman in this moment that he hates himself, “I’m sorry. Just trust me. We knew each other.”  
  
He nods, shortly, a plan forming. He gestures with one hand, “Would you like to take a seat, Miss…”  
  
“Belle,” she smiles, and then her head cocks to one side, as if listening to something far away, “I’m being told it’s French. Belle French.”  
  
Being told?  
  
“Right. Well, Miss French, take a seat.” She nods, her eyes a little sadder than he might have expected, and follows his directions, sitting herself neatly down on his threadbare leather sofa and breathing in deeply. Then something clicks in his mind, “Would you by any chance be a relation of Moe French? He sells flowers across town.”  
  
“Moe…” she considers for a moment, her gaze suddenly unfocused and distant. And then it clears, and her smile is abrupt and radiant, “Oh, yes! I believe he’s my father. It’s short for Maurice, right? Tall, heavy build, different accent to yours?”  
  
The girl doesn’t know her own father’s name? Gold needs to be on the phone to the Mayor as soon as possible: she’s clearly out of her mind. “Yes,” he says, distractedly, “He’s Australian I believe. Like you, judging by your own accent.”  
  
“Australian…” she thinks again, as if somehow consulting an encyclopaedia in her head, “Yes! Right, Australian, of course!”  
  
And then she goes back to burying her nose in his upholstery.  
  
“Something the matter now, dear?” he asks. She almost nuzzles into the leather couch cushions, and he’s left wondering — for the fifty-eighth time this morning — what in God’s name she’s doing.  
  
“This,” she says, “This is more like how you should smell. Your cologne is nice but all wrong.”  
  
“Ah, yes,” he shifts uncomfortably as he takes a seat opposite her in his armchair, “The, ah, leather you mentioned.”  
  
She nods, and for all her strangeness, all the odd twists of words she uses and the growing suspicion he holds that she is certifiably insane, her eyes are sharp and clear. And utterly, entirely, completely blue, like pure-cut stones, or the sky on the purest of summer days.  
  
He is not given to poetry, and yet here he is.  
  
“Tell me something then, dear,” he says, hands clasped on his knees as he regards her. He doesn’t know if one is supposed to indulge the mentally unbalanced, but he is curious: her delusions focus on him, after all, and he’d hate to have loose ends, “If we do know each other as you claim we do, tell me something personal you know about me.”  
  
She gives him a hard, strange look, her whole face creased in thought, and he wonders if she will break down, if he has broken her psychosis and she will collapse foaming at the mouth, if he will have to send her back to the asylum strapped to a gurney.  
  
But then her eyes brighten, and she smiles at him, “You have a fondness for a chipped teacup. All the others are fine, but still every time you take your chances with the chipped one. You take your tea with milk and no sugar, and made in a teapot, none of this bag in a cup of water nonsense. You prefer to close the curtains, keep things dark and private, as often as possible. And you like spinning wheels, although I’m willing to bet you don’t know why anymore.”  
  
She watches him carefully, eyebrows raised, awaiting his reaction.  
  
She was spot-on with everything: scarily accurate. And far more than one could gain from simply watching through the windows or talking to the town: as she said, his curtains are closed much of the time.  
  
“Can I stay?” she asks, “Please?”  
  
And before he can stop himself, he is nodding and showing her to a guest room. Because she is beautiful, and on the run, and Mayor Mills will be pissed off something rotten by this, and, most of all, because she knows him. She knows his little details, although how he cannot fathom, and he can lock her in the bedroom from the outside to prevent her from murdering him in the night.  
  
—  
  
She wakes him in the middle of the night, screaming, hands pounding on the door. He hobbles as fast as his bad leg can carry him to her door, and opens the lock without even thinking, despite the dangers of a lunatic woman in his home   
  
She should not be locked in, never, no more dungeons for this girl, not ever again.  
  
Her hands are bloodied, torn to ribbons, as she falls onto him. She has been scratching at the walls, trying to escape. Escape from a house she walked into willingly.  
  
She is sobbing, clinging to him, bleeding hands fisted in his robe, and he rocks her as if he knows her, as if she is a child.  
  
“Rum?” she whimpers, her cries finally quieting, and her blue eyes blink up at him so wide and trusting. Perhaps he has a leather-clad identical twin in another town and the bastard somehow dumped this girl off here with him.  
  
It doesn’t explain the scrubs, but it’s a theory.  
  
“No, it’s just me,” he smiles, as gently as he can, “Mr. Gold, see?”  
  
“Gold.” She nods, repeats to herself, like a child learning by rote, “Gold, yes, Gold. Not Rum, not anymore.”  
  
She nods, nods again, childlike, and curls against him, sobbing and shaking, but quieter, softer now. He strokes her hair lightly, softly: it feels the natural thing to do.  
  
It’s just one night, he thinks, grasping for the irritation at imposition he should feel. Cameron Gold is a man with a hard face and a harder heart, and he let his curiosity get the better of him.  
  
But she is crying, wretched, clinging to him. Gold hasn’t comforted a woman in perhaps twenty years, and the memories he has of such close contact are fleeting, faded and scarce. He lives alone. He walks and eats and goes about his work alone. He sleeps alone.  
  
But the girl won’t let go, and she is soft, warm in his arms. It feels good, for a small and private moment, to be needed.  
  
Then, slowly, gradually, she detangles herself from him, “Sorry, Mr. Gold,” she says, “I… it won’t happen again.”  
  
“Quite right.” He nods, standing with her, “Is there anything you need, to help you sleep?”  
  
She thinks a moment, really considering the question, “Could you… just, tell me something?”  
  
“Depends on the something.” He says, cautiously, but it earns a little smile.  
  
“Your name. Just… Mr-what-Gold? The curse— it’s incomplete.”  
  
“My given name is Cameron.” He tells her, hoping it is an acceptable answer. She nods, satisfied and a little deflated, perhaps, but the weeping wreck is gone, and he is relieved.  
  
“Thank you. I… thank you, Cameron Gold.”  
  
“You’re quite welcome,” he replies, mystified, “Sleep well, dear.”  
  
He limps off down the hall without another word to her. For some reason it hurts too much to look at her: he thinks it is the disappointment in her eyes.  
  
—-  
  
He calls the hospital the next morning, but does not tell Dr. Whale right away what has happened. He has an instinctive distrust of any of Mayor Mills’ pet institutions, the hospital and, until recently, law enforcement both ranking high on his list. That Emma Swan has freed the Sheriff’s office from her control was, of course, a lucky coincidence. Nothing to do with the fight between the pair of them he just happened to ensure happened outside his shop rather than inside it, or the time he saw her walking as Regina crossed the street and nearly ran the mayor over with his car. That she was elected off the back of both heroics and willingness not to be bullied is a coincidence.  
  
But still, while the Sheriff is at least a neutral party, he does not trust the hospital the same way. So he is wary, and asks, “Is there a psychiatric ward in Storybrooke hospital, or perhaps an asylum? I don’t believe I factored it onto the city council’s rent for the site.”  
  
“Well,” Whale pauses, bemused, “Any outpatient psychiatric treatment we send to Dr. Hopper, but in any case stronger than that we have to send the patient to Augusta. We’re a very small hospital, Mr Gold.”  
  
“I see.” Gold nods, his suspicions confirmed: she cannot have escaped from an asylum, then, not one in Storybrooke at any rate, “And there are no mental health facilities closer than Augusta?”  
  
“None with inpatient care, no.” Whale says, sounding a little irritated.  
  
“Alright, thank you, Dr. Whale.” Gold says, and hangs up.  
  
So she’s not an asylum escapee after all. Or, if she is, she has come a long way for a girl with nothing but her hospital scrubs. He’s heard no news in either the paper or on the radio about a missing patient, even though when David Nolan went AWOL from his coma bed, it had been on the news within hours. If she has a car and could drive, no doubt she could have found herself better clothing before her arrival. And the Storybrooke woods stretch for miles in every direction: there is no other town within walking distance.  
  
So, Gold surmises, the question remains: where did she come from?  
  
He returns to sit at the kitchen table, opposite his new houseguest. She has borrowed some clothes from him, an old pair of jeans from the attic that fit reasonably well and one of his shirts. “Where did you come from?” he asks, bluntly, because the lack of information is starting to worry him more than he’d like.  
  
“The same place you did, like the rest of the town,” she smiles, calmly, “But—“  
  
“But I don’t remember, yes, dear, you said.” He snaps, too tired of this game, at last, to make any pretence at playing along, “I meant yesterday: where were you before you landed on my doorstep?”  
  
She pauses, thinking a moment, then nods, “The Curse says it was a hospital. In town. A place you put people to forget about them.”  
  
“The Curse?” he asks, puzzled, but she doesn’t look fazed by his confusion, just nods with that same little smile she always seems to wear.  
  
She looks at him a moment, as if she can’t believe he’s even asking. “The Curse that the Queen cast to make everyone forget, and be miserable in a world with no happy endings.” She explains, clearly and a little slowly, as if to a dimwitted child.   
  
“Ah, of course, how silly of me.” He nods, past the point of being anything but dismissive and disbelieving.  
  
“You don’t believe me.” She says, and he can’t tell if she is accusing or resigned or simply very, very sad.  
  
“No, I don’t.” He says, just as plainly, “Because curses and happy endings have never existed anywhere, and I’m wondering if I should send you to the hospital anyway. You’re clearly out of your mind.”  
  
She stares at him, the utter hurt and betrayal in her eyes twisting a knife in his gut. Why does he feel a traitor? Why does he feel a coward? This girl is nothing and no one to him, just a possibly dangerous inconvenience with bright blue eyes and glittering delusions.  
  
“If you send me back,” she says, shakily, “You’ll never see me again.”  
  
“Sort of the appeal, dear.” He says, a little maliciously, but it pains him to do it. She’s a sick woman in need of help, but he is not a good man, he is not a kind samaritan.  
  
“No, you don’t understand,” she says, desperately, and he remembers the bloodied and screaming girl who landed in his arms the night before, “If I go back there she will kill me.”  
  
“Hospitals don’t kill people,” he says, with patronising gentleness, “They make people better.”  
  
“I was locked away, in the dark and alone, without enough food and with no way out, for twenty-eight years!” She argues back, and she can be barely twenty-eight now so how that is true he has no idea, “And she will kill me for escaping and for finding you, and then she will wake you long enough to see my body and hear my screaming, and to know that she won.”  
  
“Do you understand how completely insane you sound right now?” He demands, because she shouldn’t be able to hurt him: no one is able to hurt him. He is the fearsome Mr. Gold, the terror of Storybrooke, and he will not be shaken by a girl who is clearly out of her mind, and her stories of myth and murder.  
  
“I do, yes.” She nods, voice shaking, “And I understand that everything I say convinces you more to call Regina’s men over here and have me sent away.”  
  
“It does indeed.” He nods, and wonders again why he hasn’t yet done just that, why he thought to ask about the existence of an asylum in Storybrooke in such dishonest terms rather than simply sending her back to Whale for treatment. She is not his responsibility, but she refuses to believe that.  
  
“Fine.” She sighs, and he sees her thinking, brow furrowed and pretty eyes clouded, “Fine. How about this? How about I try to make this sane for you, hm? My father is Maurice French, he sells flowers. A dark force came into our lives… two years ago, I think, and I had no choice but to leave my father, and be locked away forever at the whim of a monster.”  
  
“You sound no more sane than before, dear.” He says, but gentler, because he can still see no insanity, no wild danger in her eyes despite the strangeness of her stories. It would be easier if she looked deranged. She just looks terrified, impassioned, but rational and reasonable. Belief in curses and evil witches notwithstanding.  
  
“Well translate it, then! Call it a metaphor!” She stares at him like he’s the one who doesn’t understand, raking a hand through her dark hair, “The dark force is my supposed insanity, my being locked away is my stay in the hospital, and the monster was Regina. It only felt like twenty-eight years because of the solitude. Except… except that I’m not insane. I never have been. I’ve only done one truly mad thing in my whole life, and it wasn’t dark. It was brilliant.”  
  
“Your father thought you had lost your mind, and Regina convinced him to have you committed. To an asylum that, by all accounts, does not exist?”  
  
“The C—“ she stops, and then nods, “Yes. Yes, that’s right.”  
  
“Then where is this mystery man in this tale?” he asks, “This Rum you cried for last night, with all the leather?”  
  
“I’m looking at him,” she says, beaming.  
  
“I haven’t worn leather since my youth, dear, aside from my gloves, shoes and belt.”  
  
“Then perhaps…” she says, slowly, thinking her next words through, “Perhaps it would help you to believe I was insane for a while, just a little bit, just enough. Perhaps it would help to think that I took what I knew of you and added it to my psychosis, and it left a trace.”  
  
“Except you know me, the details, more than what gossip would tell you.”  
  
“Except… yes, I know you!” She huffs, throws up her hands “See? The half-truths and lies are complicated, and yet you think the truth is impossible! Why won’t you just believe me?”  
  
He can see her honesty, or at least her true belief, and he can’t bear to hurt her again. She’s right: there is no story that adds up. She knows him as a close friend would, but he’s never seen her before in his life. She escaped from an asylum that doesn’t exist. She knew her own father’s given name and face but not his occupation, and not his surname.  
  
But when he sighs, and answers her, it is not a question, and not a statement of the utter impossibility of the situation. Instead, it is the first truth he feels he’s admitted in a lifetime of half-truths and twisted deals, and he doesn’t understand why it pains him to say it: it’s only truth.  
  
“Because no one, _no one_ , would ever dream of me, dear.”  
  
She stares at him, bites her lip, a fierce joy and then dampening sadness - disappointment, always disappointment in her eyes - passing over her face. And sympathy, empathetic pain, not pity but something kinder and more understanding, something stronger.  
  
“Can I stay?” she asks, softly, “Please?”  
  
Gold doesn’t say anything, but he makes no more move to turn her out, and Belle makes no move to leave.


	2. Chapter 2

Belle keeps trying to make Gold remember whatever it is she feels he’s forgotten. Every day it’s something new.  
  
The five days in, she drops a cup to the ground on purpose. It chips, the way his favourite did once, and she looks up at him and very deliberately apologises, “I’m so sorry: it’s chipped.”  
  
“It’s just a cup,” he brushes her off, automatically, and her eyes light in excitement. But he says no more on the matter, and as soon as the spark arrived it has faded: he turns away, back to his work, and she leaves quickly to fetch a dustpan and brush.  
  
The disappointment is there, a little more each day. He gives her food and shelter, so long as she does not allow the town to see her or know she is there, and even fishes some clothing out for her from the attic. The clothes fit her, oddly enough, as if they were hers to begin with. The world is very strange.  
  
A few days after the broken cup, Belle sits herself down in the armchair in his study, and narrows her eyes at him, “Why do you work so much?”  
  
He looks up at her, frowns, “Because the work needs doing, dear,” he replies, because it is obvious and the question strange, “And besides I have nothing else to do.”  
  
“Oh.” She nods, bites her lip: once again he has failed her.  
  
“Why do you ask?”  
  
She regards him a moment, as if deciding what information to share, and then says, “I knew a man, once, who spent his life in his work. He made more wealth for himself than he could ever need or use, and he told me he only kept going at it to forget the past.”  
  
Ah, this must be the mysterious Rum he has heard so much and so little about. The man who she apparently mistakes him for, or believes he might once have been.  
  
He knows, of course, that it is stuff and nonsense. His life is his life, he has forgotten not a day of it, and he never met this pretty girl with her tumbling dark curls and sweet blue eyes. He would remember her: he knows that much. He is not the man she is looking for, the man she is so attached to, and indeed he knows no such character in all the town.  
  
And Cameron Gold knows everyone.  
  
But he indulges her, all the same, because he is coming almost to enjoy her presence in his house. It feels as if the world is a little less empty with someone else’s plate in the sink, someone else’s things filling spaces always left bare before. Gold, for all his wealth, all his possessions, in fact lives a fairly sparse and plain existence.  
  
He probably doesn’t notice most of her efforts: her hints and reminders are, while he is certain significant to herself and Rum, are entirely obscure and unnoticeable to Gold. If she phrases things specifically, or holds things in a special way, or places important items in his eye line to jog his supposed memory, then he does notice the specifics.  
  
He does, however, notice when she takes a more drastic step, altering her own appearance, he supposes to look more like how Rum must have known her. She brushes her chestnut hair into curls with the hairbrush and hairdryer he provides, and sweeps it back with two braids, the rest of it dancing free about her shoulders.  
  
He thinks her beautiful, and grants her wish for a curling iron the next day, but nothing happens: the new style does nothing to remind him of who she thinks she was to him, how they are supposed to have met.  
  
She is, however, a beauty. More and more everyday, that he notices. Belle is as pretty as her name, and with a luminous quality, shining and joyous and good, that does not belong in his dragon’s lair.  
  
But when she looks at him, every now and again, he sees her staring too critically, her eyes narrowed and brow furrowed in thought. And he knows he is not the man she wishes him to be. And, more with every passing day, he finds himself - quite against his nature - wishing that he was the man she was looking for. It must be something truly special, he thinks, to have Belle look at you with her full attention, with love and devotion.  
  
He pushes the feeling down, focuses on work, snaps at her when she is too sweet, too friendly and bright, putting a hand on his forearm to offer him tea, or easing him away from his accounts to take a meal with her. He is downright mean to her, when he can bring himself to push her away, but she just smiles her secret little smile, calls him a fool, and goes back to being a permanent beam of sunshine.  
  
It is infuriating, and intoxicating, and he doesn’t know - for the first time in recent memory - how he feels, or how to proceed.  
  
But he likes having her there, and this he can no longer deny. He just wishes she liked being here with him, and wasn’t just waiting for some dramatic reappearance of another man: a man he is very clearly not, and will never be.  
  
“How did you meet him, then?” Gold asks, one evening in their third week together. They sit out on the porch - it is just warm enough to do so, in May, and Belle likes the outdoors. “Your Rum?”  
  
“You always do that.” She sighs, “You refer to yourself as two different people.”  
  
“Because, dear,” he says, patiently, “You describe him as someone who I bear absolutely no resemblance to. Never in my life have I worn leather trousers or laughed like a child, as you describe: I don’t think I even did the latter when I was a child, and I’ve never learned to use a spinning wheel. So I’ll ask again: how do you remember the two of you meeting?”  
  
She looks at him a moment, thinking, she is always thinking, his little Belle. And then she nods, and starts her tale. “He came to my father’s place of work,” she says, carefully, “I was there. We were in a lot of trouble, big trouble, we were dead for sure if nothing changed. Rum offered us a deal: a way out.”  
  
“So he saved you?”  
  
“For a price,” she smiles, “Everything has a price, he always said.”  
  
“And?” Gold asks, “What did he want?”  
  
“Me.” She says, softly, “He wanted me to leave and come with him forever, work for him as a housekeeper.”  
  
“You said yes.”  
  
“Obviously.” She shrugs, as if it doesn’t matter, as if she isn’t describing signing her life away to a man who by all accounts was both dangerous and strange, “I was bored stiff being my father’s daughter anyway, and I would have lost everything either way.”  
  
“Some would call that very brave.” He says softly, a little wistfully. He has no living family, what little he had - a mother, an old uncle - long dead in a city far from here, and no friends either. Never in his life - well, he supposes, until now at least - has Cameron Gold been called upon even to just inconvenience himself for someone else, much less give his freedom or his life. He has been knowingly and happily self-centred, he supposes, until now.  
  
And yet, Belle gave everything for her father in the space of a heartbeat, without even thinking.  
  
“Well,” she smiles, and that little gleam of mystery, of mischief, is back, “I always wanted to be brave. I figured I’d do the brave thing, and bravery would follow.”  
  
“Indeed.” He smiles, raises his cup of tea, and she does the same. The identical chips clink together, and they drink in agreeable silence.  
  
But when he glances her way, he sees her holding her cup in her dainty little hands, her head bowed, her shoulders slumped just a little. The disappointment is back, although more muted than before, and he knows that somewhere in that story was a key line, another clue to their imagined shared history: the past she insists they lived and he knows never happened.  
  
He feels as if he is fast asleep, a coma patient, and she keeps screaming to wake him up but he never hears a thing.  
  
Or perhaps she is the one who is dreaming, a sleepwalker, and he is calling from reality, trying to wake her without causing pain.  
  
Either way, she walks in a land of fanciful dreams and monsters, and he is awake in cold, hard reality. And the reality is that no matter how beautiful, how soft and sweet and sad she looks in the May sunset, she is not looking at him. She is seeing the creature of her dreams, the man she knew before, and he is never going to measure up to that.  
  
—  
  
She stays with him for four weeks before anything really changes.  
  
Twenty-eight days of broken crockery and blue dresses, of her clipping roses from every garden in town and phrasing things carefully, as if reading from a script. He doesn’t know what she has against his curtains, why she keeps insisting upon “letting some light in”, but he gets used to it.  
  
The twenty-ninth day, they are sitting in the front room - she insists upon being by his side all the time at home, and truly, he doesn’t mind at all the sensation of her body heat radiating between them, warming him, or her voice chattering in his ear every now and then, or the smile on her face - and the doorbell rings.  
  
Mayor Mills stands before him, clad in her usual black powersuit and scowl, and he instinctively blocks the doorway with his body. He can hear, distantly, Belle scrambling to hide, sit someplace Regina won’t see her. Whatever the Mayor did to the girl, wherever she sent her, must have been horrible: Belle is terrified of the woman.  
  
It takes a lot, he’s found, to terrify Belle.  
  
“Can I help you, dear?” he asks, slipping on his old face, the hard, cruel one Belle keeps determinedly chipping away at and softening; the Mayor folds her arms, defensive but powerful nonetheless.  
  
“Your shop is closed more nowadays, Gold.” she says, her voice stern and clipped. “Shorter hours, and on fewer days.”  
  
“Well noticed,” he nods, “Of course, anyone with an interest knows how to contact me. I’ve simply had other business to attend to, nothing to worry your pretty head about, and the shop is open most days all the same.”  
  
“Business?” she raises her eyebrows, smiles her poisonous smile, malicious and gleaming, taunting. Gold has long wondered what it was he did to the woman to make her hate him so much. They each have a stake in the running of the town, but he does as she asks, when she needs something, and he does nothing to infringe upon her powers in town. Truly, while he thinks perhaps she is jealous of the power he wields, he shares no such feeling: he is comfortable, and needs no more power than he has already, for what would he do with leadership?  
  
She sees him as a rival and an enemy, but the feeling is not mutual: the Mayor is often a nuisance, sometimes an obstacle to be circumvented, but little more.  
  
She sometimes looks as if she loathes him, as if he did something truly terrible to her many years ago, and she holds one hell of a grudge.  
  
He is not a good man, and he’s never claimed to be. He has kicked out whole families in the wintertime when rent went unpaid, threatened nuns, and probably, at some point, actually stolen candy from a baby. But Regina keeps up her payments, and he’s never been actively uncivil to her. He’s never done anything simply for the sake of hurting her, or making her angry: if he elicits such a response, it’s a happy bonus on top of the real success of an exercise.  
  
The way she looks at him has a hateful dimension he’s never understood, nor reciprocated.  
  
If she was the one who hurt Belle, though, and he ever finds proof. Well, then he has a feeling that that could stand to change.  
  
“Yes, dear. Business.” He says, firmly.  
  
“Is that what they’re calling kidnapping a defenceless young woman nowadays?” she smiles as if she has him by the throat, but he sees no Sheriff by her side, and her power is not as absolute as she thinks.  
  
“I’m sorry?” he stares at her, betraying no hint of alarm at her words, only bewilderment that is all too easy to feign. Belle is not a hostage, and she herself would attest to that: she wormed her way inside, after all, against his initial wishes. And Storybrooke officially has no asylum, so Regina cannot have a convincing story to tell about where the girl was before she came to him.  
  
“Neighbours reported seeing a girl in your home. They didn’t recognise her, but they never see her come or go.” Regina says, a little more forcefully, annoyed, it seems, by his refusal to cower before her.  
  
“Is it a crime to entertain guests now, Mayor Mills?” he asks, mildly, “I was not informed of this change in the law.”  
  
“Allow me inside, Mr Gold,” she says, her false, strained smile still full of daggers and bloodied blades, “This is not a conversation to be had on the doorstep.”  
  
“This is not a conversation to be had at all, Madame Mayor.” he says, tightly, dropping all pretence of cordiality, “There has been a woman staying with me, yes, but she is free to leave whenever she pleases, as she herself would attest. And, so far as I know, there are no missing people reported in Storybrooke at the moment.”  
  
He has broken no laws, and would not risk it even if he had reason to, and he doubts that Sheriff Swan would grant a search warrant on such sparse evidence. She Sheriff owes him her position, and he knows his rights. Thank goodness, he thinks, he freed the office when he did: Sheriff Humbert would have granted Regina access by now, probable cause or no.  
  
Tended to happen, he found, when city hall was literally in bed with law enforcement.  
  
“Storybrooke is not the whole world, Mr Gold.” She smiles, patronisingly, a smirking twist of her bloody lips.  
  
“It is a long way from anywhere else, though,” he returns, reasonably, “And I could find you someone to account for every hour of my whereabouts for the past month, if you’d like.”  
  
“Only guilty people prepare alibis.” She points out, silkily, but he won’t be fooled by her twists of his words.  
  
“I said could, dear, not have.” He stipulates, baring his teeth in a smile every bit as viciously false as her own, something dark and feral and long-lost rising to the surface, “Now, if that would be all, would you please leave us alone?”  
  
She freezes, stares at him, and he sees something behind her eyes, something familiar. It is like the counterpoint to the joyous hope that flares in  Belle’s eyes sometimes, when he responds to something she has said or done and for a moment - just a moment - she thinks he has become the man she misses. Regina looks the same, for just a moment, but terrified and furious in the place of Belle’s usual joy. The same recognition is there.  
  
The world is very, very strange, and getting stranger by the day.  
  
She turns and walks away without a word, and he stares after her, wondering why his hand is shaking.  
  
He closes the door and deadbolts it for good measure.  
  
“Is it… safe?” a small voice comes from the kitchen, and Belle’s dark head appears. Her eyes are so wide, and she looks so small and so afraid.  
  
No, no, banish fear; you are queen and mistress here  
  
“Yes, dear,” he sighs, coming to join her, “It’s safe.”  
  
“You sent her away,” it comes out in a rush, her smile so wide it breaks his heart, “You banished her.”  
  
“I bade her goodbye,” Gold says, the bewilderment that often steals over him in her presence back in full force, “She could come back.”  
  
“But she won’t. Not until-“ she stops herself, bites her lip, another secret that, for the sake of their tender little friendship, cannot be told.  
  
“Until what?” he asks, to keep her talking, because his eyes are riveted on those little white teeth nibbling at her soft lips, and he has not felt this way in a long time. He has not stared at a pretty girl’s mouth and imagined the taste in years, perhaps longer. He is a bachelor, contentedly so, despite how many beautiful, unattached women live in this town: they are all empty somehow, soulless and weak.  
  
He’d prefer to be alone than in a lifeless relationship with a woman he didn’t care for. And he cares for no one.  
  
But then there is Belle, and Belle is anything but soulless, anything but weak. Belle is like tempered steel and flame: Belle is bright and strong, but also soft, warm, and loving, all at once.  
  
But Belle is hardly unattached: Belle is in love with another man. A man who perhaps never existed, but who she sees the echo of every time she looks at Gold.  
  
“Until she feels ready again.” She says, and she is getting better at half-truths but he can still see the clouded lie in her eyes.  
  
“Indeed.” He agrees, because he has no idea what she is referring to, but she is right about one thing: it will be a while before Regina feels ready to mount another attack.  
  
His eyes dart from her eyes to her mouth and back again, and finally he has to brush past her, return to the living room, for fear that he will do something incredibly stupid otherwise. “You’re powerful enough to keep her away, aren’t you?” Belle asks, and Gold makes a little noise of assent as he takes a seat on the sofa.  
  
“I hope so. I’ve enough power that she wishes it was hers, at least. Some people are just obsessed with such things, even when they should direct their focus elsewhere. If she keeps this up she’ll lose her boy for good.”  
  
Belle lets out a little laugh halfway through and he turns to where she has curled herself on the sofa beside him, hands around her knees. “Something funny, dear?”  
  
“It’s just…” she sighs, shakes her head, “Nothing.”  
  
“Rum again?” he asks, resignedly, and she nods.  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” she dismisses the thought as soon as it had come, “I was just wondering… you really don’t want more power? You don’t want to make Regina dance to your tune?”  
  
He makes a dismissive little noise, “What need have I of more power? I’m comfortable enough as it is: any more would just be more work, and invite trouble from the Reginas of the world.” He gives her a pointed look, “Even more so, apparently, than adopting strange women into my life.”  
  
She’s staring at him, and that’s a look he’s never seen from her before. It’s a strange mix of hope and terror and utter astonishment that he can’t understand, but then, when has he ever understood Belle’s expressions or how they are caused? “Would you give it up, then?” she asks, softly, and he feels there’s some heavy importance on his answer that will likely go unexplained, “Your power? If something else came along?”  
  
“It would depend on the something else, dear.” He answers, calmly, “But I think that’s what Regina has wrong. If she let go of her power a little, her desperate search for more and more, then she wouldn’t have such a hard time holding on to her son. She can protect him with what she’s got now, and being his mother seems to make her happy. Why she needs more than that I don’t understand.”  
  
Belle nods, her movements oddly tense and tight all of a sudden, and stands. She leaves quickly, and he can’t understand what he said to upset her, but he’s sure he saw her crying.


	3. Chapter 3

That evening, Gold leaves a bowl of soup and a plate of bread outside Belle’s door for her dinner. Somehow, he knows that she isn’t coming down, no matter how much he wishes she would. Does he know her so well after only a few weeks?  
  
He wonders at her reaction: did he say something wrong again? Did he remind her of something she’d rather forget, or further disrupt her belief that he is the man she wishes to be with? Did he simply upset her, offend her, with his opinion?  
  
He’d got relaxed, he realises, and it had loosened his tongue. He just finds Belle so easy to talk to that, for a few moments, he had not thought to check his words before he spoke.  
  
Now he feels alone again, cold and miserable, along a settling sense of guilt that he has upset the closest thing he has to a friend.  
  
At nine pm, he knocks on her room door. She answers slowly enough that he wonders if she has left, clambered out a window, or if she just plans to sulk in silence until he leaves so she doesn’t have to talk to him. The thought settles a hard feeling in his gut, something not quite angry and not quite sad, but dangerously close to both.  
  
But then the lock on the inside withdraws, and she is standing in the white nightgown he found for her from the shop. Her eyes are red, her face flushed and swollen, and it is clear she’s been crying.  
  
He made her cry: the thought is sickening and unsettling.  
  
“Is something the matter, Belle?” he asks, in a bit of a rush. Apparently, seeing her like this - hair dishevelled, skin exposed by clinging white satin, and eyes tearful because of his words - inspires too many conflicting emotions for him to come across anything more than fumbling and awkward.  
  
He cares for her, he admits, with a sinking feeling, enough to envy and despise the other man who so clearly holds her heart. Enough that having hurt her tears him up inside.  
  
“No,” she denies, with a soft little laugh, her hand coming to rub at one reddened eye, “No, I’m fine, sorry.” She takes the tray from his hands, places it on the end table by the door,  “Thank you for the soup, I’m sorry I missed dinner.”  
  
“You ran off very quickly before,” he says, fiddling nervously with the handle of his cane, unable to meet her eyes, “I worried I had upset you.”  
  
“No!” she cries, instantly, and her immediate denial is comforting to say the least, “No, of course not! I just…” she shakes her head, “It’s not your fault, Cameron. It’s mine.”  
  
Cameron. She called him Cameron. For the first time since she moved in: she has avoided names altogether, aside from that first night, for reasons he can guess.  
  
“In what sense?” he asks, carefully.  
  
“In the sense that… I’m…” she stops, tries again, “I’m sorry, I’m not making any sense, am I?  
  
“You rarely do, dear,” he smiles, trying to seem warm and teasing, “You’re lucky I find it more endearing than unsettling.”  
  
She gives him a close look, narrow-eyed and piercing, and once again he has that sensation of being looked over, every inch, examined and evaluated. Then her eyes widen a little, just a little, and she looks up, her voice soft and absent minded, as if she is simply thinking aloud, not addressing him at all, “You’re really not him, are you? Not at all.”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“Rum. I mean, he was… he was a lot of different things, and none of them easy to explain, but you… you really are just an ordinary man.”  
  
“I’m… flattered?” he frowns, “Or insulted?”  
  
“It’s a good thing.” She assures him, and good Lord her dimples when she smiles like that are the sweetest thing in any world imaginable, “Ordinary is warm, it’s what we’re supposed to be.”  
  
“I take it he wasn’t then?” he asks, cautiously, wary of asking too much or pressing her too hard, “Ordinary, I mean.”  
  
“Under the surface, I suppose he was the most ordinary man alive. But he… yeah, it was hidden deep. He chose to hide it. Very well, in fact.” She ducks her head, shuffles her feet nervously, and takes a deep, shuddering breath before continuing. “When we separated, it was partly because Rum told me that power was more important than our relationship. That he’d rather have that, be powerful and extraordinary, than be with me.”  
  
Cameron is rather glad, at this moment, that he is not the man she talks about, who still has such a grip on her heart. It would be rather difficult, he thinks, to slowly strangle himself, which would be the fate that any man who could choose his power over Belle’s love would deserve: a slow death, where he could understand every mistake he’d made.  
  
“Oh, Belle.” He murmurs, and before he knows it she has wrapped her arms around his shoulders and his are about her waist, and he’s holding her close, the embrace long and warm and soothing. “But you thought… you thought I was him. Why did you come back?”  
  
She breaks away, looks up at him, and her hands are as fidgeting and awkward as his own, “I was always going to,” she says, “When he came to his senses. I promised a long time ago to never stop fighting for him, and I meant it. I came back because I loved him, but you were here instead.”  
  
“I’m sorry.” He apologises without knowing why, but it seems that of everything anyone could give her, more than anything else in the world, Belle deserves an apology. Even if it’s not the one she needs, even if he’s not who she wants to hear it from, to hold and smile so warmly for, at all.  
  
“Don’t be. He was, is… difficult, amazing and magical but… difficult.”  
  
“He sounds like an idiot,” Gold comments, hoping he doesn’t go too far, “I’m glad to not be him, to tell the truth.”  
  
“You should be.” She lets out a soft little laugh, “He could brood like no one’s business; you smile so much more. It’s nice, your smile.”  
  
“Now who’s the one talking about us as two different people?” he jokes, but there’s a catch in his voice. Everything is dense, warm and heavy and a little dark, and he can barely breathe for it. It doesn’t matter: he’d happily never draw breath again, if he could live in this moment with her forever.  
  
She laughs, ducks her head, and when she looks back up her eyes are so warm he could die from it. “Yes, but you won’t last.” She murmurs, and he doesn’t understand what she means, but before he can say another word her hands are back on his shoulders and she has pulled him down as she cranes up, and her lips are pressed against his, soft and warm and sweet as roses, and nothing else matters.  
  
—-  
  
He has no idea why she did it, but Gold is haunted by that kiss for the rest of the evening.  
  
Belle stares at him a moment when they part, her gaze almost scrutinising, but he just looks back, dumbfounded, until she sighs and stops, pulls away, looking down so as to avoid his eyes.  
  
She looks back up after a moment, and bestows him with a soft, beautiful, achingly sad smile, before she whispers “Goodnight, Cam.” and vanishes into her room. She does not look particularly regretful, but neither does she seem willing to pursue their activities further. Which is probably a good thing, he thinks, considering their circumstances. He doesn’t wish to complicate matters even further than they already are.  
  
And matters, it seems, are complicated beyond belief.  
  
He lives with a woman without a past, who cannot leave the house, and who is in love with another man. A man she sees every time she looks at him, and who vanishes a moment later. A man who is clearly a figment of her imagination, or a relic from her past, and either way is not here now.  
  
Gold wishes, for the first time since Belle arrived - although, really, he has wished it since the moment he saw her, he just never admitted it - that she would see him in that first instant.  
  
She is beautiful, and sweet, and kind and funny, and so much more than that. She is intelligent, and the little tinge of mystery to her smile is intoxicating. He wants to know the secrets she hides behind those cherry lips, almost as much as he wants another chance to seek out their taste.  
  
And then he stops himself, because he will not follow that road.  
  
Belle is his guest, at best his friend and at worst an odd kind of ward, and either way she is to be protected.  
  
Except she kissed him, and the world is shattered, reforming around that perfect moment of contact, of her warm mouth on his.  
  
He changes for bed in a daze, changing his suit for loose flannel pants and t-shirt without much thought. He inspects his face in the mirror, and looks for any sign of her Rum, of the man who could have so thoroughly captured her heart. Such a man must be incredible, he thinks, extraordinary and special. Belle is extraordinary, Belle is special. The man worthy of Belle’s love, of such deep and abiding love, must be equally so.  
  
But all he sees is Cameron Gold, the same man he has always been, and more weathered even than the last time: bags under his eyes; crows’ feet; more grey in his hair. The very idea that a woman like Belle, young, bright and beautiful, would choose to kiss him is ridiculous.  
  
But she did. And she did so after admitting that he is not who she had mistaken him for, after calling him Cameron and not Rum. She kissed him.  
  
He settles into his bed and turns out the light, and sighs into the darkness. She is only twelve paces away, just twelve steps down the landing corridor, from his door to hers. She is not far, not far at all, but there are locked doors and secrets and all the very strangest of obstacles lying in between.  
  
But still, he counts the steps, over and over in his head. He imagines being a man with that kind of bravery, to cross his own hallway and knock on her door again. To go inside and to ask her why she kissed him, why she said he ‘won’t last’, why she is still here when she knows he is not the love of her life, the man she’s looking for.  
  
He counts, and counts, and counts again, until he is sure that he is asleep and dreaming when the floorboards creak, and the door slips open, and there is a small, slight figure bleeding in around the sliver of light it creates. He dreams the small snick of the door closing behind her, and the soft footfalls as she pads on bare feet across his floor, to stand beside his bed, silent and still in the dark.  
  
He is fast asleep, he has to be, and simply dreaming a Belle who would always call him ‘Cameron’, and see him and only him in every moment they are together. Who does not miss another man, a man with his face, someone dangerous and incredible, able to inspire the kind of love and devotion that Gold himself never could.  
  
He is a fool; a dreaming, sleeping fool, when he shifts over in the bed to make room. And he is ashamed: even in his own mind, she should not be sliding cautiously between the covers, she should not be settling herself with one arm over his chest, and the other on his shoulder.  
  
She should not curl and snuggle in, and he should not wrap an arm around her shoulders to draw her closer, and his hand should not creep around the side of her breast, and her mouth should not meet his throat.   
  
But they do, they do, and soon her warm, soft, sleepy lips have met his, and his arms are full, full, full of Belle, and he has rolled her beneath him, and everything is dark and heavy and warmer than he has ever been. And he could not dream this, he could not dream how heavenly it is to have her close against him, to feel every inch of her pressed against every inch of him.  
  
The satin of her nightgown is nothing to the pure silk of her skin, and he can taste the salt on her cheeks, freshly dried tears, as he trails his lips over her face. He kisses every inch of her he can find, softly, reverently, and she makes the sweetest little sounds as he does. As if she wants this, wants him, as badly as he is craving her.  
  
They don’t speak, not before, not during, especially not after. Not even when their clothes are tangled at the foot of the bed, and she is naked and sated in his arms, and his lips are still tingling with the aftershocks of her kisses. Every inch of him is on fire, burning and sparking where her skin meets his, and he draws her closer, closer, curling around her with his whole body, as she slips into a blind sleep.  
  
He follows her; he has never slept so well in all his life.  
  
—  
  
When Gold wakes, Belle is not there. He is not surprised; in fact, he might have died of shock, had she still been beside him come morning.  
  
Her nightgown is gone from the bed, her side neatly made up, and only the absence of his own pyjamas, and her head’s indent in the pillow beside him, proves to him that it was not, in fact, a dream.  
  
He does not bother to dress: it is a Saturday morning, so he has nowhere to be, and dressing would somehow draw a line between last night and this new morning. It would somehow make it unimportant, allow them both to forget. More than anything, Gold does not want to forget.  
  
So he clambers back into his discarded t-shirt and flannel pants, pulls his ratty slippers onto his feet and his equally battered robe around his shoulders, and, cane in hand, he goes in search of his errant bedmate.  
  
He does not have to search far: the sound of sizzling bacon in the kitchen draws him downstairs as soon as he has reached the top of the stairs.  
  
He’d half expected her to be gone entirely, to have crept out in the middle of the night and vanished.  
  
“Belle?” her back is to him, facing the stove, and her shoulders tense when she hears his voice. She is fully dressed, of course, but it does not help that her only clothing choices thus far have been from shrunken castoffs and his own wardrobe. Seeing her in his old burgundy shirt over her jeans, her hair wet and curling at the ends from her shower, he cannot believe he had ever thought her resistible, thought he could keep his distance from her.  
  
“I’m making breakfast,” she says, at last, “I have enough for two, if you want some?”  
  
“Yes,” he says, carefully, “That would be wonderful.”  
  
She nods, tightly, and goes back to her frying, flipping her bacon over in the pan. He watches from the doorway as she places the bacon and eggs on their plates, and lays them out neatly on the table, all the while avoiding eye-contact.  
  
“Well?” she says, “Are you going to take a seat?”  
  
He nods, unsure why he didn’t in the first place, and sits beside her as she digs into her breakfast. Their meal passes in silence, tense and awkward, and he wonders if she regrets it now, if she hates him for allowing last night to happen at all.  
  
He didn’t crawl into bed with her, he thinks, irritation growing stronger by the moment. He didn’t slip his clothing off and close his eyes, or start kissing her senseless. That was all her. She had crossed the hallway, she had slipped between his sheets and kissed him, over and over, until thought was a thing of the past: she had chosen to make love to him.  
  
He had not been unwilling, not been unhappy; in fact he had been closer to ecstatic than he could remember ever being before. But he had not started it, would never have started it, and so she should not be upset. Not with him, at least.  
  
She doesn’t even look at him as they eat, but he knows her body language. She is tense, uncomfortable, and upset. She is ready to avoid him forever, he thinks, and now, now she looks like everyone else in town. Now she looks as if she is sat next to a monster, and wants nothing more than to run.  
  
He liked her different, liked when she liked him. And now she’s gone and ruined everything for them both, now she’s gone and made him want her, and given him exactly what he wanted only to take herself away come morning. Belle is upset with him, and it feels as if she believes he has disregarded her feelings, and not the other way around.  
  
Gold is as close to angry as he could ever be with her, seething as she stands to rinse her plate, back turned to him all the while, acting as if he does not exist. He is angry with Belle, and angry with himself, and furious with Rum, with the ghost who hangs between them, who dangles Belle in front of him one moment, teasingly just within reach, before snatching her away the next.  
  
Whether he is a figment of her imagination, or a real man who ruined her life, or even, as she claims, a denizen of this fairytale kingdom they all supposedly once inhabited, Gold hates him more than he has ever hated anyone before. Because he can see the bastard, plain as day, as he wraps himself around Belle, keeping Gold from ever touching her, ever being truly alone with her: never allowing her to see Gold past Rum’s face in her head.  
  
“I’m sorry.” She says, and he sees all at once that her shoulders are trembling, her arms tense, knuckles white where her hands are braced on the counter. Here eyes are fixed on the sink in front of her, her hair hanging around her face and hiding even her profile from his searching eyes.  
  
The words snap him out of his raging thoughts, and he wonders if he’d still be so angry if he didn’t feel so stupid and so ignorant, so kept in the dark.  
  
“Ah, yes,” he says, standing and coming to meet her, leaning against the counter with his arms folded defensively in front of him. He nods, looks at the curtain of dark hair still hiding her face from him, “Sorry. And what, Belle, are you sorry for?”  
  
He sounds like his old self, the biting tones of Mr Gold, the terror of Storybrooke back in his voice. Condescension and cruelty are second nature to him, but he is so confused, so angry, so many conflicting emotions warring inside him, that he falls back on what he knows best. He is ashamed of himself for it, but if Belle notices, she doesn’t show it.  
  
“I’m sorry for being a selfish, lonely, cruel bitch last night.” She replies, and the anger in her voice, shaking, almost close to tears, as she applies such harsh language to herself rips through him. He is furious, livid, raging and burning with it, but she is right there with him.   
  
The thought brings him up short: no matter how angry he might be, with him and with her and with the man she loves, it is nothing compared with the pain that she must be feeling.  
  
“Don’t,” he leans in closer to her, voice low and shaking “Don’t ever call yourself that again, you understand me?” his voice is tight, barely controlled, trembling with fury. She doesn’t say a word. “Look at me, Belle!” he snaps, and she jerks her chin around, so her hair flies out of her face, and he can see her tearful eyes, her clenched jaw. “Never again.”  
  
“Why not? It’s the truth.” She reels away from him, hands in her hair, raking and pulling, shaking her head, and he can see her disbelieving, confused, disgusted with herself. Everything he’s dealing with, and she’s struck down by it too. “I gave in,” she mutters, “I gave in for one minute, and now…”  
  
“And now what?”  
  
“You don’t even understand.” She shakes her head, looking at him at last, “You can’t understand because you’re not real. And no matter how much I pretend it’s different or…” she sighs, the fight and fire gone as fast as it came, “I gave up, and I took advantage of you. You don’t know me, you don’t know the whole story, and I took advantage of that.”  
  
He reaches out, and she shies away like a frightened animal but he is undeterred. He brushes the backs of his knuckles along her arm, down over her wrist, along her smooth, pale fingers. His hand intertwines with hers, and squeezes, lightly.  
  
“I’m real.” He says, quietly, “I’m as real as you are.”  
  
“No, you’re soft,” she argues, as if it’s an accusation, although her voice matches his, low and quiet, cracking around the edges, “And warm, and…” she reaches her free hand up, and cups his cheek, rubbing the ridge of her thumb over his cheekbone, caressing the skin, “I shouldn’t get used to it. I shouldn’t enjoy it. I should be trying to bring you back.”  
  
“Belle, stop talking to him.” He says, and he knows it sounds demanding but he’s tried reasoning, and he’s worked around her, and all that’s left to hope for is a head-on collision, to speak in her language and try to wake her up. “There’s no one here but you and me.”  
  
“For now.” She whispers.  
  
“Forever.” He denies, and he doesn’t know from where he draws the courage, but he seizes her mouth with his, kissing her like he didn’t have the guts to do last night, with heat and passion and urgency. This is no longer the time for dreaming kisses, cautious caresses and things that can be denied come morning. The morning light is streaming in, lighting every dark crevice, and Gold kisses Belle like he’s dying, like they won’t get another chance. He doesn’t know where the desperation comes from, whether he is trying to wake the princess from her slumber, to banish the demon that stands between them both, or merely to show her that he is real and solid, human and aching for her, for all of her, forever.  
  
She makes a little noise, soft and moaning in the back of her throat, and kisses him back just as fiercely, her arms wrapping around his neck as his hands grasp her hips, and lift her onto the counter, bracing himself against the surface, his cane far across the room.  
  
This time, when they come together, they are breathing hard, harshly, loudly into the silent air. She moans and bites at his neck, her noises muffled in his shoulder as he buries his face in the soft, damp curls at the side of her neck, and breathes in as much of her as is possible, trying to breathe her almost into his very skin. He needs these moments, needs to remember every detail, the warmth and weight of her hair, the surprised, gasping quality of her whimpers and cries, the pressure of her legs wrapped around his hips and the heat of her, all of her, radiating through all of him.  
  
He needs these moments, because they’ll be memories all too soon, and he’ll need something to keep him warm in the darkness.  
  
Because yes, Belle is brave, but brave people always run. They run into battle, they run from fear, they run from safety. Belle is scared, here, and Belle feels there is a war somewhere to be fought. Much as he might wish it otherwise, Gold knows even as he takes her, even as she is hot and trembling in his arms, she will not stay in the after. She will not cuddle and sigh and be safe here, with him, no matter how much he might wish it.  
  
Belle is a dream come true, soft and warm and beautiful, moaning his name and wrapped willingly in his arms, but dreams end.  
  
And as they finish, as she releases one last, long, agonised cry, and he tenses and muffles his groan in her neck, and they stand together, forehead to forehead, catching their breath, he counts the seconds until she runs.  
  
“Ten days.” She murmurs, nodding, as he finally rips himself away from her and sorts himself out, and she slips down onto her feet, straightening her shirt and buttoning her jeans, “Ten days.”  
  
“Until what, dear?” he asks, frowning in confusion, “Ten days until what?”  
  
She turns to him, a cracked but bright smile on her lips, “Until the end of the world, Cam.” she says, and he doesn’t know why the sound of his name on her lips, affectionately shortened, lovingly spoken, both kills and saves him.  
  
“The end of the-“ he shakes his head, gathers her close and holds her tight, and she sighs, her arms coming to wrap around his torso, holding him as well, “No, I don’t want to know.” he exhales deeply, nods, “Ten days?”  
  
Ten days, then, for them to be together. Ten days for him to convince her to stay with him, that there’re no wars to fight nor curses to break. Ten days, and it’s a chance, a small chance, but he’ll take whatever he can get.  
  
“Ten days.” She nods, and if his t-shirt is a little damp when she pulls away, if her eyes are a little misty and red, then he doesn’t comment on it.


	4. Chapter 4

Ten days, she promises, and what days they are.  
  
He’d been wrong, it seems, about Belle not staying for the after. In fact, it seems she has suddenly woken up, life and energy sparking from her fingertips, and the very air in their house is alive with her, shimmering and bright.  
  
They spend that first day together on the sofa, both in the loosest, most casual clothes they can find, curled up under his heaviest blanket despite the spring warmth, her head in his lap and his hands stroking her hair. They talk, and he tells her about the town, about what parts of his past seem easy to remember and important to share.  
  
He tells her how he decided, near fifteen years ago, to finally leave Glasgow and move to the States. How he’d found himself in Storybrooke because he’d driven through going elsewhere, Canada maybe, or lost on his way to Vermont, and found the shop for sale. How antiques seemed not too different from the shop work he’d done at home, and he’s been here ever since.  
  
He tells her about what he can remember of his mother, who was dark-haired and small and warm, a little like Belle herself. He tells her later things, about the Mayor’s hostility - she tenses all over at that, but calms quickly under his stroking hands in her hair, his soothing little noises - and the recent clashes between City Hall and the Sheriff’s office.  
  
She nods along to it all, listens intently, but she does not chime in. She doesn’t pretend to have her own stories to share, her own past ready to recount.  
  
“What about you?” he asks, finally, after he has told her all he can think of to tell, and she is just staring at the ceiling, her eyes closed but not in sleep.  
  
“What about me?” she returns, and he sighs: would it be so much to ask of her, that she tell him something? Anything?  
  
“What was your childhood like?”  
  
Now it is her turn to sigh, to shift on to her side so she faces away from him, but her head is, at least, still in his lap. “You don’t want to hear it, Cam.”  
  
“Alright,” he concedes, “I’d find it difficult to hear about a life in a castle, with dragons and demons and the like. But there’s other things, things even… things that endure. What were your parents like?”  
  
She turns back to face him, frowns for a moment as if in thought, before she finds what she’s looking for, and nods, “My mama… I never knew her. She died when I was very young, she got sick and they couldn’t save her.”  
  
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” he says, for lack of something better or more meaningful, but she shrugs it off, wriggling to get more comfortable as his fingers go back to playing with the dark hair spilling around her shoulders and down his legs.  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” she shrugs slightly, “I never knew her, as I said. So I can’t miss her, and I suppose there’s something to be said for that. But papa said she was beautiful. She was little, like me,” she dimples, laughs, “And stubborn, too. Had to have her own way.”  
  
“Now why does that sound familiar?” he chuckles, and she laughs again, swatting lightly at him in reproof.  
  
“Yes, well, apparently she decided they would be married. Like she decided they were courting, when he was still too nervous to say two words to her. She just said one day… he said she told him today would be a very happy day. And when he asked her why, she just smiled and told him that today was the day they got engaged, so to mark the date.”  
  
Gold laughs aloud at that, “She sounds like she was really something.”  
  
Belle nods, her eyes turning wistful, “Yes, I suppose she was. Papa used to say I took after her, in the best and worst ways.”  
  
“You must have been a terror as a teenager,” Gold says, shaking his head, “Headstrong and beautiful. A father’s worst nightmare, I would imagine.”  
  
She frowns or a second, and he wonders if he’s overstepped himself, if he’s offended her. But then she blushes, the dimples reappearing, and she’s looking at him almost shyly, “You think I’m beautiful?”  
  
That she could doubt it is so ridiculous that he gapes at her a moment, before saying, sincerely, “Of course I do. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, Belle.”  
  
She leans up and cups his face in her hands, kissing him deeply. His hands come to hold her back, and she slides up so she is curled in his lap, her head on his shoulder and legs across his. She cuddles in closer, sighing contentedly, and the silence is the warmest and most comfortable he has ever known.  
  
She doesn’t seem to want to talk more, and while he is brimming with questions, he doesn’t want to press her for answers. He thinks he’s probably done something, said something, again that makes her remember that he is not Rum, not who she would like to believe he is. Would her old lover not tell her how beautiful she is? Would he let her wonder, let her guess, worry even, when she is easily the most gorgeous sight any given day could offer?  
  
Gold has found himself compiling a mental list of reasons he is very glad not to be her Rum, and it increases by the day. He sounds like a man entirely unworthy of such a gift as Belle’s heart, even less worthy than Gold himself.  
  
He holds Belle close, unable to stop stroking her sprawling hair, and wishes for this day to never end.  
  
—  
They spend the next day in a similar fashion, out in the garden but still together, still wandering and talking and kissing like new lovers.  
  
But those days end, and on the third day, he has to go to work, and he mourns the loss of his precious time with Belle. It seems such a stupid waste, to be at work when he could be home with her, when she is finally willing to kiss him and let herself be kissed, to share herself.  
  
But he has to be there, so that when Emma Swan comes in to discuss Mary Margaret Blanchard’s release from prison, or Regina Mills comes to poke and pry, no one can see anything out of the ordinary.  
  
Belle cannot leave his house, she cannot be seen or known by the world, not yet. Not yet, but soon. Soon, when the world doesn’t end, if she’s still there, he’ll see about getting her into the town, finding her a real life, a life they can share. But not yet. Belle herself, the one time he brought up her entering into Storybrooke properly, shot it down immediately.  
  
So he runs the shop, and deals with the town, and sells the trinkets on the shelves. And if he smiles more today, if the memory of waking her this morning with tender, fluttering kisses, of taking her softly and slowly in their bed in the dawning light; of how she cradled him close and whispered his name, her face bright with ecstasy, replays over and over in his mind, then no one would ever guess.  
  
When he comes home, she has caused a minor disaster in the kitchen, but the meal that comes from it is delicious, especially when shared with her  free hand in his, and their feet entwining beneath the table.  
  
—  
  
The next three days pass in similar fashion, with as much joy as could be found snatched greedily from the mornings, before she waved him off to work and settled down with a book, and he donned the mask of the town’s dragon in his fortress.  
  
And it is a mask, he realises, a mask that slips every time Belle kisses him, and he thinks that maybe this could last, that if their newfound idyl were to last forever he’d not mind in the slightest. He is a man who shares a home with his closest friend and dearest love, and love her he does. He would be a husband someday, perhaps even a father, were she to ask it of him, and happily so.  
  
He is not the same man who found her that morning just over a month ago, not the same at all.  
  
Now, he is the man she described that first morning after their night together, the man she said wouldn’t last. He is soft, warm, and feels more human than he has since he left Scotland, than he has since Storybrooke’s chill set in, and since he got so used to the solitude.  
  
He calls home at lunchtime, and they talk as they have their midday meal; she tells him what she’s been reading, and he tells her about who came in and what they said and bought. She tells him what she thinks of each new case or deal or sale, and he recommends the next book she should try after this one, and she is always the one to hang up. Had he his way, he’d talk to her until closing, when he could go home and continue in person.  
  
In fact, had he his way, he’d not leave home at all in the morning: it feels as if he only does so to keep up appearances, for her sake. He doesn’t know when dealmaking and miserly money hoarding became everything to him, but Belle has shattered that mindset into a hundred little pieces.  
  
He does, thankfully still think of other people, have other plans of his own: he is not reliant upon her for air, the way he has heard men in love can become. But she has opened a door, and now he remembers how he used to love to draw and to read novels, how he had once walked for pleasure and enjoyed the woods. Dreams and talents long forgotten, long discarded, become topics for dinner conversation, and she laughs and nods along, encouraging and brilliant.  
  
They talk or sit in silence in the evenings, and he notices that she begins to take an interest in gardening manuals, in books on how to tend vegetable gardens, on rose husbandry and landscaping.  
  
He brings her home, on the fifth day, seeds from the garden centre off Orchard Street. They’re only little packets, measly and predictable, nothing special. A few vegetables, carrots and green beans, and a few more for flowers, pansies and violets. He’d offer her the most exotic and beautiful flowers, the most delicious fruits and vegetables to fill her garden had he the chance, but this was what Storybrooke could offer, so this was what she received.  
  
If she notices the dull predictability of his choices, she does not in any way show it. She takes the seeds in her hands like he has handed her the sun and the moon, and kisses him over and over again in thanks. He is bowled over by her kisses, her embrace, her warm, curvy little body pressed so firmly against his, and when could he ever say no to her?  
  
They make love on the sofa, and in the aftermath she tangles their fingers together, and tells him where she thinks she will start their garden, where she will plant these treasures he has brought for her.  
  
They go through, in that first week, all the motions of beginning a life together. Except Belle doesn’t leave his property, and Gold is haunted by her promise of the end.  
  
In ten days the world will end, she said, and by the end of the fifth day he wants to bring it up, to hear her refute it.  
  
It would be a cruel twist of fate, he thinks, for the world to end right as he has started to enjoy it.  
  
—  
  
Belle isn’t home when he comes back on the sixth day.  
  
His little love had been in the middle of baking a batch of cookies when he’d left that morning: he had been hard pressed to be able to leave her, in fact, when her neck smelt of her baking, and she had leaned back so invitingly when he had leaned in to kiss it, his hands on her hips.  
  
She had been fine, smiling and humming and fine, and now she is gone.  
  
His heart plummets, free falling and racing, as he scours the house and the garden, crying out her name in rising alarm, but there is no sign of her.  
  
Finally, finally, he finds her note left on the kitchen table. He’d been too frantic to notice before, stupid sod that he is, but reading it hardly calms him at all.  
  
She went out. To the woods, for a walk. Alone.  
  
She hasn’t left his home in a month, and now she is alone in the woods. He considers calling the Sheriff’s office, but he doesn’t want to alert Emma Swan to Belle’s existence, let alone allow her to take her into her custody. And there is no way he can search the woods himself: they’re vast, dark, and with the rain soaking the ground, impossible with his knee.  
  
So he makes himself a cup of tea, sits down in the chair by the front window, and waits.  
  
Every second she is gone passes like an hour. Not because he cannot be without her - he’d live even if she were gone forever, he knows, perhaps not happily but alive, so long as she was safe - but because he cannot stop running every disaster scenario through his mind.  
  
She tripped and fell wrong, and is now dead, lying in a pile of sodden, muddy leaves, blood leaking from her head.  
  
She has been run down by a car, the Mayor out for a drive, perhaps, and is sprawled facedown in a ditch, the driver long gone, her breathing faint.  
  
She is actually insane, and the psychosis finally caught up with her, and she is wondering the woods calling for Rumpelstiltskin, her arms and face cut and bleeding from branches and thorns, her mind a haze of confusion and pain.  
  
He doesn’t, in his soul, expect for her to come back.  
  
He can barely breathe, the ground no longer solid beneath his feet, his every limb shaking and his heart pounding, as he sits rigid in his chair, not daring to move for fear he may vomit. The knot in his stomach grows as an hour passes, then two.  
  
She is gone, vanished into the aether, and he will never see her again; she will be lost, in pain, dying, and he won’t be there to save her.  
  
She threw herself off the tower; she died.  
  
When, three hours after he found her note and sat down to wait, there is pounding on his door, he runs as fast as his hobbled leg can carry him. He throws the door open, amazed that it does not break on its hinges with the force he puts behind it, and catches Belle’s shaking, sodden, freezing body as she hurls herself into his arms.  
  
“Belle?” he closes the door and sets her back on her feet, stroking her hair back worriedly, looking for marks. She is fighting back tears, he can see, but seems physically unharmed. Her hair is plastered to her head, her clothes soaked with rainwater, clinging to her skin. “Oh, God, Belle where did you go?”  
  
“He… um…” she looks away, still shaking, closing in on herself, “We had a break-in. He was looking for you I… I handled it.”  
  
“Who?” he frowns at her, nonplussed by her evasion, “Belle, love, you have to tell me who broke in. Who was looking for me?”  
  
“I… handled it. Don’t worry. It wasn’t you you he was looking for.”  
  
Reality hits him like a wave of ice water, his blood suddenly as cold as Belle’s frozen skin. Someone else looking for Rum; someone else mistaking him for Belle’s former lover.  
  
He doesn’t even want to think about what that could mean, the validity that brings to her former claims of other worlds and forgotten selves. Rum’s full name is Rumpelstiltskin, and Belle thinks he was a fairytale character and she too, and so it has to be a fantasy, a delusion.  
  
“He was looking for Rum?” he asks, and she pauses, then nods, miserably.  
  
“I handled it.” She says again, “I… he won’t come by here again.”  
  
“Okay,” he nods, “Is there any way you will tell me who it was?”  
  
“No.” She says, firmly, “No, because you’ll do something stupid, you’ll go after him and he’s… well, he’s dealt with. I can’t bring you into this, I won’t.” She’s crying openly now, tears scoring lines down her drying cheeks,  shoulders shaking, and she falls back into his arms as he holds her as close as is physically possible, stroking her sodden hair as she sobs into his shirtfront.  
  
“Okay, okay, shhh, it’s okay, I’ve got you.” He murmurs, stroking the back of her hair, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, “Just… never do that to me again.”  
  
“Do what?” she asks, voice muffled in his chest.  
  
“Leave.” He says, simply, “Without telling me where you’re going, and when you’ll come back. I was worried half to death, sweetheart, I was dying.”  
  
She gives a muffled little laugh, takes him completely by surprise, and he gently pushes her back so he can see her face, “I’m sorry,” she says, still giggling softly, “Really, it’s just… you telling me not to leave. It’s funny.”  
  
He sighs, “Yet another thing I’m not going to understand, I suppose?”  
  
She nods, clamping down on her smile, and he gets his revenge by swooping in and kissing her, deeply and thoroughly, so that when he pulls back her breathing is ragged and her cheeks flushed with warmth, not the cold.  
  
“Promise me,” he says, low and urgent, “Please, just… I’d love to take you out into the world. Say the word and we’ll work it out, just… don’t scare me like that, love. Please. My old heart can’t take it.”  
  
She gives him the softest smile he’s ever seen, and she nods, “I promise, Cam. I won’t leave again without telling you first.”  
  
“Good.” He nods, and then he’s kissing her, faster and harder than before, his arms almost crushing her body against him, and she is matching him, moan for moan, heartbeat for heartbeat.  
  
They struggle upstairs, Gold stripping Belle’s sodden, frozen clothes from her clammy skin as fast as he can, trying to warm her, trying to remove all trace of her adventure and his nightmarish evening, so that he need not think on it, need not wonder on all the many things about it that terrify him to the core.  
  
They’re both naked, both burning and grasping, by the time they fall into their bed, by the time they come together.  
  
Gold has no idea what has gotten into her, nor into him: it is not that the gentleness and warmth they had together has gone, not that they have become animals, biting and tearing, causing pain and bruising in their hurried wake. It’s more than that, better than that, because the tenderness never left. They crash and burn together, and it’s the most intense sensation Gold has felt in his entire life.  
  
He loves her, really and truly, deep in his soul. He loves her, and he gives all of that to her, demanding nothing and offering everything. He holds her against him all the while, eyes never straying from her own, and he wonders if he can just push hard enough, love deeply enough, give her enough pleasure and stroke enough of her skin, then she will actually become part of him. She will never leave and he will never have to re-embrace the cold that had so covered him before.  
  
In Gold’s mind, this first union after he had been so very sure he’d lost her forever, is the start of an eternity.  
  
And he tries, and almost, almost succeeds, to convince himself that when their eyes meet in the aftermath, when he holds her close and strokes her hair, when he loves her so deeply he could die, her eyes are seeing that beginning as well.  
  
But he cannot miss how she looks at him, still, even now: she looks as if he is the one who could be gone come morning, as if this is the end, as if she’s afraid he will shatter, or simply disappear.  
  
He holds her closer, and she clings as hard as he does. They’re matched breath for breath, heartbeat for heartbeat, and if he doesn’t think about how it would feel to lose her, acknowledge that someday it must happen, then it never will.  
  
—-  
  
On the seventh day, Gold knows for certain that he has well and truly lost his mind.  
  
He is cleaning the shop, whistling an old song under his breath and dusting mildly, thinking about what movie they’ll watch tonight, what kind of a start she has made on the garden. He is wondering, idly, about how she has thrown herself, over the past week, into building something resembling a life together. They have a routine, they sleep together at night and eat together morning and evening; she is growing a garden and he is learning to not care what she sees, who she sees, in the first instant when she looks at him.  
  
That she looks at him at all, that she smiles and bestows her kisses, that she is warm and loving in his arms, is more than enough for him.  
  
It is then, while he is dusting a jewellery box on one of the lower shelves, that he finds the most perfect diamond ring he has ever seen.  
  
It’s simple, a band of gold with only three small stones set within, but the metal is woven, as if plaited from three thick strands of pure gold, and the diamond is set between two pale sapphires. It is these, not the larger diamond with its clearcut shine, that make so much more than just another trinket to be sold: they are the exact colour of Belle’s eyes.  
  
It is accompanied by two other rings, both plain gold in the same woven pattern. A wedding set.  
  
He hardly recognises himself as he scrambles for a ring box, finally finding one beneath the counter and setting the ring inside, his hands shaking, his heart in his mouth.  
  
He is Cameron Gold, he thinks, frantically: he doesn’t feel both hopeful and tearful over old, unsellable rings; he doesn’t even consider this sort of romantic foolery; he doesn’t feel at all. He is a miser and a cheat, a loner and a misanthropic old bastard. He is the man who, a mere month ago, was inches from sending a distressed young woman back where she came from with little to no thought for what would happen when she got there.  
  
He cares for no one, and he likes it that way. And not because of some cliched, philosophical idiocy about love being weakness, or even because of the paranoia he’s heard himself accused of.  
  
He cares for no one because he has never met anyone worth caring about.  
  
He clutches the box with white fingers, his hand trembling uncontrollably, adrenaline, pure terror and excitement coursing through his veins. He barely recognises himself, but then, maybe that’s just because this is the first time in years that he’s seen Cameron Gold, the man he’s supposed to be, in the mirror.  
  
He wasn’t cruel, he remembers, not always. Storybrooke had been what turned him into the cold, vindictive man who scratched up August Booth’s motorbike, who overcharged the nuns and caused the Mayor such loathing. He had always been crafty, never been the most moral or kind of people, but he’d never been so hard-hearted and mean either.  
  
Belle didn’t change him into something new, not really. She just woke him up. He was asleep for decades, without even realising it, and he is finally, finally, awake.  
  
Ten days she said, and it has been six already. The world shows no signs of ending, no rivers of blood or cracks in the sky, and he thinks that maybe, maybe, when everything is the same when they wake up on her eleventh day, she will let go of all of this. Then they can be together, properly, and live the life she is helping him to build together.  
  
On the eleventh morning, he promises himself, he will ask her. He will make their life together begin properly, he will make it real.  
  
The ring box slips into his pocket, and he wonders if this is an epiphany, or just insanity finally creeping in.


	5. Chapter 5

The tenth day dawns fresh and bright, and Gold is loathe to leave Belle alone. 

Their weekend had been idyllic: they had spent time together in her new garden, weeding and watering, allowing the new seeds to flourish under her patient hands. They had cooked meals together, eaten together, made love on the couch and their bed with equal vigour. It had been perfect, and she had not allowed anything to come in and spoil it. She is trying, really trying, and he loves her more with every passing day.

But he has a meeting with the carpenter, Marco, to discuss repair work on an old clock he’s recently acquired, and he has a feeling that - with the gossip of the Mayor and the Sheriff’s increasing clashes, now both over their shared son and the whole Blanchard affair - Emma Swan may be in need of his services also. He needs to be in work; he needs to remain a presence in the town, Belle or no Belle.

Not, of course, that he wishes to get his hands dirty with a messy custody battle. He aided Mary Margaret as well as he could, but that was due to his feeling that to sit and do nothing would have been tacitly allying himself with Regina Mills, and that was unappealing. Storybrooke is becoming a silent battlefield, the storm clouds gathering and the lines being drawn, and Gold feels he’d rather be on the side of the revolution than the falling monarch.

That said, he equally will not be responsible for the win or the loss either way. Especially, although he wouldn’t admit it, when it would involve dragging a child into the fray, and forcing him to take centre stage.

His business with the carpenter concludes rather faster than he expected, but no sooner has he settled himself to his book-keeping, quiet and concentrated, than the door slams open again.

“Mr Gold?” He looks up, a welcoming smile on his face, and sees the Sheriff striding toward him. He sets his books aside, and inclines his head.

“Why, Sheriff Swan, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I need your help.”

He chuckles, “I could have deduced that, dear: you have yet to accuse me of something, and you’ve been in my shop a whole two minutes.” He shakes his head, pleased to have cut off her planned speech within four words of its beginning: he may wish to be more on her side than her rival’s, but keeping her off-balance will always be to his advantage. “What is the problem, Sheriff?”

“My son.” She says, and her voice just drips with earnest emotion, with determination, a mother lion defending her cub, “I need to start custody proceedings.”

He gives her a long look, as if this is news, as if he is considering the idea. Then he looks down, and shakes his head, “I’m sorry, dear, I am not a family lawyer. I deal in contracts, and little else.”

He walks away, and she follows him, her body language screaming desperation, and he has all the power, all the power in the world over Emma Swan.

And he doesn’t really want it, it’s a hassle and a needless complication, but it’s better than the other way around. “But you helped Mary Margaret!” she protests, “That wasn’t a contract!”

He gives her a dull look, “Miss Blanchard was clearly innocent, and a criminal proceeding of that type is, legally-speaking, uncomplicated. At least compared to the mess a custody battle over young Henry would become.”

“I can’t just leave him with that sociopath!” he rather thinks that if Emma were the tearful kind, she would be crying right now. As it is, she holds herself tense, her normally severe expression as pleading as he has ever seen it.

“Mayor Mills, no matter what personality flaws she may possess, has given the boy a stable and comfortable home for the past ten years.” He says, calmly, reasonably, “You may have a case if you can get someone close to the child on your side, a teacher or a therapist, but even then, you signed a closed adoption, did you not? You have forfeited your maternal rights, and Mayor Mills has the contracts on her side.”

“You think it’s hopeless.” She sighs, and he can see her deflate, the fight knocked out of her.

“No, dear,” he says, “I never said that. But the odds are not in your favour, and I don’t feel like pitting myself so squarely against the Mayor over such a complicated issue.”

“Please,” she says, and if he had ever wondered what the Sheriff would look like entirely broken, this is it, “Please, there isn’t another lawyer in Storybrooke, and I can’t leave town with him still stuck with her.”

He cocks his head to one side, considering. She will bring the case either way, he can see that, and Mayor Mills has more money by far for a decent lawyer. Even if Regina didn’t come to him at all, she would have her pick of any lawyer in the state to come and fight on her side. Emma would lose, be likely drummed out of town, and there would go the one and only true opposition to Regina Mills’ dictatorial control of the town.

Gold would like to see the Mayor knocked off her pedestal. He would like to be able to take Belle outside without worrying about her incurring the wrath and attention of the authorities, without her being terrified of being imprisoned once more. He’d like to be able to make a real life with her, and Regina is the only real thing standing in his way.

His hand closes over the ring box in his pocket, and he looks once more at Emma. “Alright, Sheriff Swan, if you can go and make one last attempt at an amicable arrangement with the Mayor, and, failing that, find two witnesses to testify to your case, then I am at your service.”

“Really?” the smile breaks over her face, smoothing the harsh lines and brightening her eyes. She really is a very pretty girl, he thinks, when the weight of whatever traumas she’s been through is lifted from her.

He wonders if this is what Belle sees, when she surprises him and for a moment all he can see is her. When he smiles with no other thought in his head but having her smile with him.

Perhaps the idea of being able to remain with a loved one is truly that powerful.

“Yes, dear, really.”

—

He tells Belle about their meeting that night, when the plates have been cleared and they’re sat across from each other at the dinner table, enjoying the apple crumble she made and ice cream she found in his freezer.

“So what did you decide to do?” Belle asks, frowning, “You’re not going to weigh in, are you?”

“Of course I am.” Gold shrugs, “Regina Mills is a psychopath: she had you committed for no reason, locked away, and more than that she’s basically done the same to the whole town.”

“So you’re going to take away her child?”

“I’m going to help Emma Swan get her son back,” he says, “Regina can react to that however she likes.”

“You told her to go and talk to her?” Belle asks, urgently, “You told Emma Swan to go and speak, alone, with Regina? About taking her son away from her? You really think that was a good idea?”

He looks at her shrewdly, “She’s not a violent psychopath, Belle,” he says, with a little smile, “I’m sure Sheriff Swan can take care of herself. And her case will be more compelling if we can prove that she did all she could to make the previous arrangement work, and Regina is the obstruction.”

“Hmm,” Belle nods, but Gold feels she’s only half-listening. Then she shakes her head, her smile bright once more, “You’re probably right,” she says, and turns the conversation to how her garden is coming along, and from there into the book she started today and how she’ll murder him with her dessert spoon if he ruins the ending.

Their evening proceeds as usual from there, ending with her head pillowed on his lap, his hands stroking her hair, and some old movie playing on his decrepit old television set. They’re both too tired to read, and the movie provides some time to just sit and share one another, which neither could object to.

Gold thinks idly of the ring box still sat in his coat pocket. He thinks of how tomorrow is the day, tomorrow is the last day she promised, and then he can propose without worrying about her time limits. Then she will accept that the world will remain as it always was, and their life together can truly begin.

He should feel nervous, he thinks, but in truth they have acted as a married couple these past days, and they have yet to hit a stumbling block, let alone a true obstacle. He doesn’t think of the night before, when she arrived home shaken and soaked to the skin: he doesn’t think of the strangeness of their circumstances, or her insistence that he is in fact someone else.

In the face of those things, he would have to feel uneasy about how fast he’s fallen for her, how quickly he has been enthralled and seduced by this quiet, warm, peaceful life. How quick he is to brush aside any possible problem, if it could interfere with their happiness.

But he forgets them in the soft, shining waves of her dark hair, and her contented little noises, almost catlike, as he strokes her, and the warmth of her body pressed against his lap.

The peace is shattered a half hour later by the phone ringing, and he disentangles himself from the woman he loves to answer it.

“Gold,” he says, but he lacks his usual bark, love-dazed as he is.

“Ah, not your guest, then?” Regina purrs on the other end, and something is wrong, she should not sound so happy right now, and certainly not to speak to him, “What a pity, I am so curious about her.”

“What do you want, Madame Mayor?” he asks, his voice a deliberately antagonistic sigh.

“To inform you that whether you understand the implication or not, your little client is currently on life support in the Storybrooke Hospital.” He can hear the glee in her voice, “Poor thing ate something that disagreed strongly with her, I think, she just collapsed on me. I did everything I could, of course… dear Henry even tried the CPR they showed at school. But the doctors aren’t hopeful.”

“You poisoned her?” he asks, horrified, and Belle’s head shoots up, a similar horror - but no shock, no surprise, just sadness and something else he cannot recognise - written on her face.

“Of course not,” Regina snaps, “What good would that do me?”

“She would die,” he points out, patience feigned in the place of the sick horror he feels, “And your son would stay with you.”

“I’m not a murderess, Mr Gold,” she says, softly, “No matter what Emma Swan and her friends may have told you.”

“She’s on life support.”

“She’s a sick woman,” Regina dismisses, “She’s been acting irrationally for a while, actually, so perhaps the problem is more serious than I thought. She might have been gravely ill for some time… I blame myself, allowing her to take such a stressful position in the town when she was so clearly unwell.”

“One day, Regina,” he vows, “One day you won’t be able to talk yourself out of trouble.”

“The only trouble you should worry about is currently comatose in the hospital,” Regina says, “I’d focus my priorities, if I were you.”

She hangs up, and Gold stares, dumbfounded, at the handset for a moment.

“Regina poisoned Emma.” Belle guesses, and Gold nods, a little numbly.

“Yes, it appears so.” He says, “I told her to go over there, and now she’s nearly dead.” He’s shaking, hands trembling, and the first he knows of Belle’s movement is when she has already crossed the room and taken his hands in hers, rubbing the backs with her thumbs.

“You couldn’t have known.” She soothes, and holds out her arms for him to step into, holding him close and stroking his hair and his back as he clings to her.

This is not how things happen in his world. In his world, you can screw someone over with an uneven contract or a harsh rental agreement: you can take everything they own, so long as they sign on the dotted line. But his is not a world of murder, remorseless and gloating as Regina had sounded. His is not a world where a simple, legally necessary conversation ends on a life support machine.

“You knew,” he says, voice muffled in her hair, and he draws back to look at her hard, “You were wary of me sending her over there. You thought this might happen.”

She shrugs, but there’s that same block of secrets and half-truths in her eyes, and he is even more frightened by that than he is by the notion of his world changing so very fast around him. “I was locked up by her, remember? I have a right to be suspicious.”

He shakes his head, not accepting her pacifying words, not now, not anymore, “Who do you think she is?”

“What?”

“Who do you think she is?” he demands, his fingers digging into her shoulders, and he hopes he isn’t hurting her with the little shred of sense he has left, “In your crazy fairy land, who was she?”

She looks at him, hard, but for once her eyes are clear as day, “The Evil Queen.”

He stares at her, unable to speak. Because she didn’t even think, didn’t have to think, and the words sound so much like truth, so very very much. His Belle doesn’t lie, she never lies, and she isn’t insane: he wouldn’t love her as he does if she was truly insane.

“Okay.” He nods, swallowing hard and letting go of Belle, pushing the fear that threatens to overwhelm him down as far as he can and easing himself down onto the stairs to pull his shoes on and grab his coat, “Okay, that makes things easier.”

“What does?”

He looks up at her, and he knows, hates, that for one moment he’s more vulnerable than he’s ever been in his life. He’s scared out of his mind: Regina hates him more than anyone, and she already tried to murder Emma. He wonders if she had anything to do with Kathryn Nolan’s disappearance as well, or if that was just a news reporter gone rogue, as the official report had indicated.

Who is to say he won’t get into his car and start driving, only to find his breaks cut? Order a coffee at Granny’s and find himself choking on the floor like Emma Swan? Wake in the night to his house on fire, and Belle already dead from smoke inhalation, all exits cut off, unable to move fast enough with his cane to save himself or the woman he loves?

“It’s easier if she’s an Evil Queen, because the bad guys don’t win in fairytales.” He says, his teeth gritted.

“But… you’re Rumpelstiltskin. You didn’t get a happy ending either.” She says, and he stares at her, frozen, his heart pounding in his chest, too loud in his ears.

“No.” He says, “No, I’m not. I’m not Rumpelstiltskin, I’m Cameron Gold, do you hear me?” his voice is rising in volume and pitch, risen to a roar, and he is on his feet, his face inches from hers, his fists clenched to avoid grabbing her and risking hurting her again. “I am not one of the bad guys, okay? I’m not some evil wizard, no matter how much of a wicked witch she might be.”

She nods, eyes bright and frantic and too blue, “I know, love, I know, I’m sorry.” She strokes his shoulders with her calm little hands, belying the urgency in her eyes, “I’m sorry, Cam, I really am.”

And again, he is too scared to ask her what she’s really apologising for. She sounds too guilty for one verbal slip-up, like she is the one who tried to kill someone tonight.

“We have to go.” She says, “Now. We have to go and get Henry and Mary Margaret.”

She slips her shoes on, the little pair of pumps he got funny looks at the store buying, and the coat he found in the attic. She is swamped by the grey fabric, but he barely notices, as she grabs his hand and leads him out into the cold.


	6. Chapter 6

Gold had assumed that, when the time came for Belle to come out of his home and into the world, he would be the one holding her hand, leading her, showing her.

But in actual fact, when they walk down the front path and onto the street, Belle is leading the way, and he is merely giving her the odd direction here and there. He doesn’t know why it is their place to go to Emma Swan’s roommate, or to her son, to tell them what happened. Surely that is the place of the doctors at the hospital to contact next of kin, and yet Belle is insistent.

They reach his car, and he straps her in as if she were a child when she does no more than sit there, hands fiddling nervously in her lap. He drives them to Emma Swan’s apartment as fast as he can, and does not wonder on why Belle considers this her business, why this is what drew her, at last, back out into the world.

“This is their home?” she asks, when they arrive, and he nods. 

She gives him a resolute smile, a matching nod as she strides out onto the pavement and up into the apartments. She knocks on the door, hard and repeatedly, until a harried-looking Mary Margaret Blanchard throws the door open.

“What?” 

She is met with silence.

All of a sudden, Belle is rooted to the spot, wordless. Gold can see her mouth gaping, her words scrambled, and he realises that this is the first person - the incident a few nights back notwithstanding - that she has spoken to aside from him in over a month.

“We’re sorry to intrude, Miss Blanchard,” he cuts in, smoothly, “But I just received some troubling news from the Mayor, and I thought you’d want to know.”

Mary Margaret pales, “Is this about my case? Do- do I still need a lawyer?”

“No, no,” he assures her, “this is not about you, Miss Blanchard; it’s about your roommate. Sheriff Swan has no emergency contact, so far as I am aware, and I thought that someone ought to inform you.”

“Oh god,” she murmurs, a hand flying to her collarbone, “Did something happen?”

“She collapsed, at the Mayor’s house,“ he knows his voice must convey the gravity of the situation, because Mary Margaret’s face drains of colour, 

“Oh, oh no…” 

“She hasn’t woken since, and her condition… it’s critical, deteriorating rapidly. She’s on life support, and I… we thought she would want you there. Henry too, if you can wrest him from the Mayor for more than a moment at a time.”

“Yes, yes of course!” she’s shaking all over, and Belle is still speechless, watching in horror, her hands trembling as Mary Margaret grabs what things she needs and slips her shoes on, coming as fast as she can to join them in the hallway.

She’s frantic, panicking, and he can relate: he was much the same the night Belle disappeared. One’s only true friend in the world is a precious commodity, and the panic, the anxiety and terror, are unbearable when something threatens to take them away.

So he walks Belle and Mary Margaret to the car as fast as he can, and Mary Margaret slips into the back, only then speaking again as if she has only now remembered how, “Oh, god… please, what happened? Mr Gold, can you tell me what happened to her?”

He settles himself and Belle into the front, and then says, “She collapsed, that’s all the Mayor said. The doctors think it might have been something she ate, but they know nothing for certain.”

“What, like food poisoning?” she asks, desperately, “That’s not so bad, people recover from that!”

“She’s on life support,” he repeats, quietly, firmly: it is the important fact here, after all. “The doctors were not encouraging, by the sounds of it. I’d ah… I’d be preparing myself.”

Belle reaches over, and places her hand over his on the steering wheel, for just a moment. The touch is beautifully reassuring, stability and warmth in a world that is changing far to fast, however fleeting it might be.

“Oh god,” Mary Margaret whispers, and Belle turns back to look at her, finally, the spell that had kept her rigid and silent finally broken.

“It’ll be alright,” she says, her voice a promise and a prayer, and Gold knows that no matter the dangers, that voice would set him to rest, would grant him strength and bravery. “I promise. It’ll be okay.”

“Who are you?” Mary Margaret asks, “I’ve never seen you before, what’s your name?”

“I’m… Belle.” Belle says, haltingly, “I’m a friend of Cam’s.” She pats him on the shoulder, and he smiles despite the situation. She’s introducing herself as a part of his life: the thought makes him warm all over.

“Oh,” Mary Margaret nods, sniffs, her words choked and clogged by desperate tears. “And… you think it’ll be okay?”

“I know it will,” Belle says, firmly, with such surety that for a moment even Gold believes it. But only for a moment.

“Okay. I should call Henry.” Mary Margaret smiles, just a little, and Belle responds in kind. Gold only hopes that she hasn’t gone and made a promise she cannot keep.

—

Emma Swan is in a coma.

A consistent vegetative state, is what the doctors want to call it, but they say that she’ll have to stabilise first for that to be true. As it is, she’s slipping away, slowly, the life support machine maintaining only the illusion of a healthy heartbeat.

“Oh, no no no,” Mary Margaret flies to her side, her hands coming to cup Emma’s sallow cheeks, to stroke her sweat-matted blonde hair, “Emma!”

“I’m sorry, Mary Margaret,” Dr Whale says from the other side of the bed, although Gold doubts the distraught woman can hear him, “But we’ve done all we can. There’s no toxin we’ve identified in her bloodstream, no real head trauma, and the few scans we can run here came back clean. She’s circling the drain, and we still can’t explain why.”

“She can’t go,” Mary Margaret shakes her head, frantic, “No, no she can’t, she’s a fighter! She’ll wake up,” her voice drops to a whisper, as she strokes back Emma’s hair from her face, “She has to wake up.”

“Miss Blanchard,” a cold voice, laced with the slightest amount of smug malice, poison in every syllable, comes from the doorway. Regina strides inside with Henry held tightly by the hand, every inch of her coated in saccharine sympathy, and worse: victory. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“She’s not lost, Madame Mayor,” Mary Margaret corrects, her face cast in stone and twice as cold, twice as hard. “Not yet.”

“Is she going to be okay?” Henry asks, and finally wriggles free from Regina’s grasp, running to stand beside his teacher, taking her place by Emma’s unmoving head. He stares down at his birth mother’s sleeping face, unmoving, his voice as desperate as Mary Margaret’s had bee. “She’s going to wake up, right? She has to be okay!”

“Henry, I’m sorry,” Regina says, in a tone that says she’s anything but, “But the doctors say there’s nothing more they can do.”

“You poisoned her!” he screams, his head snapping around to look at the Mayor with enough malice to kill a man in his tracks. Mary Margaret clutches him close, her hand around the back of his head, trying to stop him from launching himself at his adoptive mother. “It was you!”

“Henry, Henry,” Mary Margaret crouches down, stroking his face and his hair, his arms and shoulders, anything to soothe the boy, to make the world a better place once again, the place he used to live in. Gold knows the feeling: he feels sick to his stomach, the ground lurching beneath him, as Regina gloats over the body of her dying rival. This is not his familiar, safe world anymore: he wonders if it ever really was.

He always knew their dislike for each other was strong, always knew it couldn’t last and someone would have to lose. He’d thought that one or the other would be run out of town, or lose the court battle for custody, something mundane, something sane and normal. He’d never, ever considered that Regina would resort to actual violence, even murder… people didn’t do things like that, did they? Not in the real world, not in this day and age.

“Regina,” he says, tightly, “You’re distressing the lad. Let’s step into the hall, shall we?”

“Of course.” She smiles, and as he leads her out, her cold gaze lands on Belle, who had followed and was trying as hard as possible to hide behind him, to not be seen, not be noticed by the woman who terrifies her.

“Ah, I see your guest is here as well, Mr Gold,” Regina smiles, and oh lord, this is definitely a cold-blooded killer standing before him. How he never saw it before he doesn’t know, but he physically pushes Belle behind him, shielding her instinctively from a woman who is like a poisoned dagger wrapped in apple perfume and silk.

“She knows the Sheriff and I are friendly,” he says, calmly, when he finally finds an easy lie to tell, “She came along for moral support.”

“Well, isn’t that lovely?” Regina smiles like the cat that ate an entire flock of canaries, “And where did she come from?” she asks, silkily, “I meant to ask, since I don’t recall ever seeing her around town.”

He looks back at Belle, more as a chance to think of an explanation than to check on her, but he’s glad he did. She has collapsed into a little ball on the ground, her hands protecting her head, face hidden by her tumbling hair. She is shaking, sobbing, he thinks, and she is muttering something over and over, banging her forehead against her knees. 

“You’re distressing her.” He snaps at the Mayor, “Please go and find something else to do, away from those of us trying to help Emma Swan.”

She stiffens, shakes her head, but although he can see she wants to stay, unbelievably she moves off down the corridor, and out of sight.

“She’s gone?” Belle asks, and he nods, wishing he could crouch beside her, take her into his arms, but his knee is acting up as it is and such a motion would be impossible.

“Yes, yes, love,” he says, “She’s gone, I promise, she’s gone.”

“Good.” She sighs, and gets to her feet, dusting herself down, “She isn’t needed here.”

“You’re okay?” he asks, stunned, and she flashes him a smile that’s a little too bright, too confident, a little false.

“She expects to see a shaking wreck in me,” she says, shrugging, “And to let her believe that can’t hurt.” She kisses his cheek, “Thank you for getting rid of her. Thank you.”

“I don’t know what I did.”

“I don’t know either,” Belle shrugs, “Magic?”

He lets out a strained laugh at her bad joke, and she copies him. “I’m, um… I know what to do now, I think. So thank you.”

“No, no,” he shakes his head, taking her arm to keep her still, “Belle, you have to stop with this ‘end of the world’ thing. Let’s go home,” he suggests, a little desperately, “Let’s go home and leave them to their grief.”

She shakes her head, tears in her eyes despite her smile, “No, don’t worry, dearest, please,” she kisses him, firmly and deeply, her hands on his face until his own releases her arm, and she steps free, “It’ll be over in a moment. Don’t worry, please.”

“Belle…” he lets her go, he could never make her stay against her will, and she crosses to Emma’s beside, opposite Mary Margaret and Henry.

He hears something, distantly, something like “True love’s kiss, or at least a kiss goodbye”. Then Mary Margaret is nodding, looking down at her friend, and pressing a soft kiss to her forehead, followed closely by a distraught and shaking Henry.

The world shakes when the boy’s lips touch his mother’s forehead, and everything is suddenly too bright, rushing and strange. He is plunged for a head-rushed moment into memory: he can see his mother’s face becoming dirty and weathered, her jeans and shirt becoming rags; the streets of Glasgow in his minds eye becoming a ramshackle village, a peasant’s town from a fairy story.

His memories shift and fit and shake before his eyes, and all in the space of a moment. Cameron Gold fades into the background, and his life with him, now nothing but a memory himself.

And Baelfire comes rushing back to fill the empty spaces, unruly mop of fluffy dark hair and bright, brave eyes. The love of his father’s life, the only shining light in the universe for so many hundreds of years.

Cameron Gold bows his head with the shock of it, but it is Rumpelstiltskin who looks back up, and it his his eyes that open and blink out at the world. 

He can all of a sudden sense the palpable lack of magic at his fingertips, and see, truly see, Belle - his true love, his maid, the most beautiful woman in existence - bent over the body of the Saviour, whose eyes are opening, to the delight of her son and Snow White.

The curse is broken.

Emma and Henry are hugging, and Snow White is crying, and he can sense Regina down the hallway, the second epicentre of the curse, shaking and shattering just the same, running for cover.

“Did it work?” Belle asks, softly, and Snow White nods, tearfully.

“Yes, it did, although I still don’t know you.” But despite her words, she smiles over her daughter’s hospital bed, and hauls Belle into a joyous hug all the same. Rumpelstiltskin can hear words of gratitude whispered, as Belle hugs her back.

His head is rushing, burning, three centuries of memories crowding out the Curse until he is himself again. 

“It’s fine,” she excuses, with a fluttering hand and a kind smile, pulling back from Snow and looking across at Rumpelstiltskin, “You know my true love, though, I think.”

Rumpelstiltskin looks at the beaming princess and her family, and the smiling face of his true love, and is at a loss for what to do. He was supposed to be the one who remembered, him, and Belle was dead, and he had struck a deal, he had known Emma’s name, it was supposed to work.

The curse is broken, but the saviour has no reason still to help him, and there is no more magic: the thing that could have brought it back still rests in the belly of a dragon.

But Belle broke the curse. Belle found him again, and brought Henry to Emma’s side, and the curse is now broken as he planned. Because of her. Because his love is alive and bright and strong, and came back to him, and saved them all.

He crosses the room in three steps, and has her in his arms, kissing her breathless because no more answers are needed, not right now.

She was right, right about everything. And he’d been cursed, and dense, and not listened. Too scared to try to believe her: too desperate to have her near. With no lost son to find, no magic to keep, no demons in his soul, she had been his everything.

“Oh, yes,” Snow says, arms crossed defensively, “I know him.”

He breaks away from Belle for long enough to sneer at her, menacingly, “The curse is broken, dearie, as requested. So you can be a little nicer to me, I think.”

“No,” Snow shakes her head, “You were as useless as us. She’s the one who saved us,” she points to Belle, “She remembered and she saved us.”

“I know,” he smiles down at her, one hand on Belle’s cheek, and she beams back, so happy, happy to see him, “I know.”

—

They have a lot to talk about.

But Belle is lost in the hubbub, as it appears everyone in Storybrooke is out on the streets, finding lost loved ones, embracing, and trying to work out what is to happen next. Snow sweeps Belle along, touting her as the town’s true Saviour, and Emma is all too happy to allow someone else to be the centre of attention for a while, as she hangs back and tries to work out what just happened to the world.

Rumpelstiltskin finally manages to convince Snow and Charming to go and collect his potion from the dragon beneath the library, by claiming that it is the only way to save the town from being dragged into limbo. It’s a quick blurring of the truth - it’s possible, of course, that Storybrooke will hang in the in-between between worlds if it is not anchored so, but unlikely - but a necessary one. He needs magic to find Bae: nothing else matters as much as that.

The Charming family set off together on their quest - glad, he thinks, for something to do besides talk, they’ve always preferred to be hitting things than communicating, that family - but Rumpelstiltskin is left behind.

With Belle at his side, and a hundred questions unanswered.

“You broke the curse, dearie,” he says, by way of greeting, and Belle nods.

“I winged it a little, but yes. Regina helped with that, actually: true love’s kiss will break any curse.”

“So she is the one who told you,” he nods, trying to sound conversational, when he still wants to tear Regina limb from limb, wants to cut and slice and bleed her until she is dry. She locked her up, she locked Belle away in the cold and the dark, while he mourned her and drank himself stupid. He is so angry he could murder someone, and he knows exactly who his victim will be.

“Yes,” she lays a hand on his arm, soft and soothing. “Please, please let’s just go home.”

“I just need to stop by the Mayor’s house, sweetheart,” he says, “Just have one errand to run.”

“Rumpelstiltskin!” her voice cracks like a whip, and he is brought up short, “You cannot kill her. No. You have to promise me.”

“She locked you away, dearie,” he says, his voice soft, calm, implacably cruel, “and made it so I couldn’t even remember you. She deserves the worst punishment imaginable.”

“But I’m here!” she cries, and places his hand on her cheek, his thumb unable to resist stroking her soft skin, so warm and real and alive. “I’m here, look, I’m alive. I’m fine. And you know who I am.”

He gives a reluctant, hoarse little chuckle, “Darling, even cursed and clueless, I knew who you were.”

“Liar,” she chides, but she kisses him anyway, and they stand for long minutes, wrapped in each other’s arms , kissing like their lives depend on it, messy and hot and open-mouthed, trying to devour one another.

He pulls away, looks down at her, “Why do you think I let you stay with me for so long?”

“Because you were lonely?” she asks, biting her lip, and he considers.

“Well, yes, but aside from that.”

“And… because you love me,” she says, softer, and he nods, bringing her in for another kiss, and it is dangerous to keep kissing her so because he feels he might never stop, and there’re too many other things that need attending to before they can start with that.

“That I do dearie, even Cameron Gold loved you.”

“So why didn’t it work? If you loved me even then, and I kissed you… you didn’t remember. You were still Cam.”

“It had to be Emma,” he explains, “The curse was made with her parents’ love, so she had to be involved in the breaking.”

“Oh,” she smiles, looks down at her feet, “I assumed it just wasn’t strong enough, with us… you know, that maybe Cam loved me but after… well, everything, maybe Rumpelstiltskin didn’t.” She smiles, brilliantly, “I’m so glad that I was wrong!” she pecks his lips again, but he is still all over, his blood suddenly ice-water in his veins, and she pulls back, concern written all over her lovely face, “What’s the matter?”

He shakes his head, dismissing the thought because he cannot put it into any words that make sense, not yet, and even if he could he wouldn’t want to give the dread credence by naming it, “Nothing, nothing, just the aftershocks of the curse breaking, I think.”

He is a little shaky, after all, it’s not really a lie: just an exaggeration, a literal truth.

“Oh,” she nods, believing him, because he hasn’t lied to her in over thirty years, “Are you alright?”

“Fine, dearie,” he brushes her concern aside, “Entirely fine. I should go the the library, keep an eye on Snow and Charming. Can you find your own way home?”

She nods, staring at him a little oddly, “Yes, I’m sure I can. If not, a walk would be nice all the same.”

He is almost about to let her go, when he sees the mob running across the crossroads, headed for the Mayor’s house. It feels as if Belle has only just been returned to him, although in truth it is he who has only just returned to her, and while he’d like best to have her safe and secure in their home, the library and by his side, even with a dragon beneath their feet, is far preferable to her being alone in the face of an angry mob.

“No,” he sighs, “I’m not going to risk it, you’ll have to come with me.”

“Okay,” she beams at him, and he smiles hesitantly back: it feels as if she actually wants to be by his side. As if she is happy he woke from his cursed trance, even though he knows that when he was cursed he was a better man, more the man she deserves. He was not power-hungry, nor distracted, nor dangerous. He was calm and steady, and his love for her was all-consuming.

Rumpelstiltskin loves her, he knows he does, almost more than anything. But the almost, he thinks, is the difference: she wants to stay with him now, as she slips her hand into his and trots alongside him toward the library, but that’s bound to change.

Once he is himself again, magic and all, once things are as they were.

Once she realises that she was right, last night, when she was warning Cameron Gold about the danger of warring with an Evil Queen: he is Rumpelstiltskin once more, now and forever, and he is not one of the heroes, not one who gets a happy ending.

Belle was Cameron Gold’s happy ending, but that ending has come and passed as quickly as Gold himself has. Rumpelstiltskin can still feel the ring box in his coat pocket, the one Cameron intended to give to Belle in the morning, the one he was going to use to propose. To take those tentative beginnings at a happily ever after, and turn them into a long, happy life together. A marriage with a house big enough for children - bright eyed, with her dark curls and smile, his turn for the curious and sneaky - where they could grow old together.

That future is bound up in this ring, and now it might as well be dust.

Never mind that the gold is his own; never mind that he wove it for her, in the darkness of his despair, all those years ago, in the vain hope that perhaps, despite his rejection and his cruelty, she would still return to him.

But it had been a fool’s hope then, and it remains so now. He can’t give her what Gold might have, longevity and open, honest love; safety and freedom; happiness. None of it. He can offer danger, and a lost son who may or may not accept his father back into his heart, and a house that will reek of dark magic and incantations. He can give her a life where she must always come second to that first love, the one he’s fought for all these years, the one she set him back on track to recover; a life where her husband would always be caught between his power, his darkness, his true love and his family.

She deserves better, and yet she follows him, kisses him, loves him. She must not feel it, but he does: that horrible feeling, premonition, that churning in his gut. He cannot be enough for her, cannot be what she needs, not really, not anymore. This won’t end the way either of them hopes.

The ring box sits in his pocket, but he knows it will end up back on that dusty shelf, and Belle will never see it. If he does manage to propose, if they make it that long, it will not be with that ring: that ring is a symbol, now, of everything they’ll never have. That ring belonged to a dead man, a better man, a braver man, and Rumpelstiltskin can barely stand to think of it.

But still, Rumpelstiltskin squeezes Belle’s hand tightly, and hopes to all the Gods that he’s wrong.

That one day, even with all the reasons that make such a thing impossible, he can have the same warm, soft happy ending that Cameron Gold so effortlessly achieved: that he too can, someday, make Belle as happy as she deserves to be. 

She holds his hand, and he holds on to that hope, and for now, just for now, it might even be enough.


End file.
